Oscar Woolnough

Dr. Oscar Woolnough is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at UTHealth Houston. His research combines human cognitive neuroscience with engineering and mathematical analysis to investigate the neural basis of reading and language processing in epilepsy patients.

Dr. Woolnough's research focuses on utilizing intracranial recordings to study neural representations of reading. The high spatiotemporal resolution of these recordings allows him to track information flow across the brain's surface and study interactions between functional neural hubs. His work addresses fundamental questions about word recognition, how statistical properties of language are encoded, and how the visual stream interacts with broader reading networks. He also employs direct cortical stimulation to establish causal links between brain activity and behavior.

His publication record demonstrates consistent high-impact research in cognitive neuroscience. His articles reveal a research trajectory focused on mapping the spatiotemporal dynamics of reading processes, with particular emphasis on orthographic and lexical processing in the ventral visual pathway, dissociation of reading and naming functions, and distributed frontotemporal networks for sentence processing. His work bridges fundamental cognitive neuroscience with clinical applications in neurosurgery.

His notable contributions include:

• Dissociation of reading and naming in ventral occipitotemporal cortex (2024)
• Spatiotemporally distributed frontotemporal networks for sentence reading (2023)
• A Spatiotemporal Map of Reading Aloud (2022)
• Spatiotemporal dynamics of orthographic and lexical processing (2021)
• Category Selectivity for Face and Scene Recognition (2020)

Dr. Woolnough's work has significant translational value, developing methods to pre-surgically and intraoperatively map eloquent brain function. His research helps neurosurgeons better understand which brain areas are critical for language processing, directly improving patient care during procedures where language preservation is essential.