Abstract:  The previous neuroimaging studies mainly used the serial visual presentation paradigm to investigate the neural mechanism of reading with words, sentences and paragraphs. Recently, some studies have begun to use the naturalistic reading paradigm in fMRI experiments, which are introduced and discussed. It has been revealed that the co-registration of eye movement and fMRI is a good way to record the data in the naturalistic reading task. In addition, a method using self-paced eye movements as markers for hemodynamic brain responses during naturalistic reading is also introduced. As a trend for future neuroimaging studies of reading, the utilization of new paradigms and new methods provide a high ecological validity to explore the neural mechanism of eye movements in reading. The further research needs to take advantage of experimental designs and other relevant methods to overcome the limitation of fMRI in low resolution of time. Moreover, the relationship between neural systems for reading and eye movements requires further investigation.

Key words: reading, eye movement, fMRI