Brain activation in the processing of Chinese characters and words: A functional MRI study

Abstract

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to identify the neural correlates of Chinese character and word reading. The Chinese stimuli were presented visually, one at a time. Subjects covertly generated a word that was semantically related to each stimulus. Three sorts of Chinese items were used: single characters having precise meanings, single characters having vague meanings, and two-character Chinese words. The results indicated that reading Chinese is characterized by extensive activity of the neural systems, with strong left lateralization of frontal (BAs 9 and 47) and temporal (BA 37) cortices and right lateralization of visual systems (BAs 17-19), parietal lobe (BA 3), and cerebellum. The location of peak activation in the left frontal regions coincided nearly completely both for vague- and precise-meaning characters as well as for two-character words, without dissociation in laterality patterns. In addition, left frontal activations were modulated by the ease of semantic retrieval. The present results constitute a challenge to the deeply ingrained belief that activations in reading single characters are right lateralized, whereas activations in reading two-character words are left lateralized.

The Modulation of Visual and Task Characteristics of a Writing System on Hemispheric Lateralization in Visual Word Recognition—A Computational Exploration

“…In short, Chinese character recognition has been shown to involve less LH processing/ more RH processing compared with word recognition in alphabetic languages, in particular in the orthographic/visual word form processing. Consistent with the behavioral data, although most of the existing fMRI studies on Chinese character recognition usually used character pronunciation or semantic tasks, they generally showed more RH-lateralized activation relative to English reading particularly in the visual areas (e.g., Tan et al, 2000Tan et al, , 2001. Although in contrast to Chinese character recognition, the recognition of Chinese two-character words has been shown to have a RVF/LH advantage in tachitoscopic word identification tasks (e.g., Tzeng et al, 1979;Cheng & Yang, 1989;note, however, that Keung & Hoosain, 1989; reported a RH advantage in processing high stroke number low frequency two-character Chinese words with short exposure time and low luminance), fMRI studies of Chinese word pronunciation also in general showed more bilateral or RH-lateralized activation in the occipitotemporal system, in contrast to the typically LH-lateralized occipitotemporal activation in English word reading (according to a meta-analysis by Tan, Laird, Li, & Fox, 2005; see also Kuo et al, 2001).…”

It's a word: Early electrophysiological response to the character likeness of pictographs

“…It is worth mentioning that previous studies documented the word specificity of N170 in the left hemisphere; we found the sensitivity of N170 to character likeness in both hemispheres, which indicated that the property of character likeness would not modulate the lateralization. One explanation, as mentioned earlier, is that pictographs elicited bilateral activations, which reflected the greater visuospatial analysis, because of years of experience in processing Chinese characters (a script that relies on visuospatial analysis and consequently recruits the right hemisphere; Liu, Dunlap, Fiez, & Perfetti, 2007;Tan, Laird, Li, & Fox, 2005;Tan et al, 2000). Second, the present study found that the latencies of N170, but not P100, were also tuned to character likeness with shorter latencies to more character-like stimuli, although the results were not entirely consistent across the two hemispheres and across the two types of evaluation data of character likeness.…”

Reading in the brain of children and adults: A meta‐analysis of 40 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies

“…Furthermore, to clearly differentiate between children and adults, studies with adolescents were excluded [e.g., Gr€ unling et al, 2004;Landi et al, 2010]. Several potentially interesting studies could not be included in the meta-analysis because readingrelated activation was not reported separately for young and older readers [Brown et al, 2005;Schlaggar et al, 2002;Turkeltaub et al, 2003], or not in terms of 3-D coordinates in standard stereotactic space on the whole-brain level [e.g., Holland et al, 2001;Shaywitz et al, 2002Shaywitz et al, , 2007, or not for an alphabetic language [Chinese: Cao et al, 2009;Chou et al, 2009;Tan et al, 2000;Siok et al, 2003;or Japanese: Nakamura et al, 2000Miura et al, 2005]. This specific study selection was intended to improve the quality and accuracy of the meta-analytic results.…”