Neural substrates of phonological selection for Japanese character Kanji based on fMRI investigations

Matsuo, Keizo; Chen, Shen-Hsing Annabel; Hue, Chih-Wei; Wu, Chiao-Yi; Bagarinao, Epifanio; Tseng, Wen‐Yih Isaac; Nakai, Toshiharu

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.12.099

Cited by 22 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…A diffusion tensor imaging study showed anatomical connectivity between the primary visual cortex and inferior temporal gyrus via the middle and inferior temporal gyri (Yeatman et al 2013), which is also consistent with our results. The left inferior frontal gyrus is thought to be involved in phonological processing (Tan et al 2001;Gold and Buckner 2002;Turkeltaub et al 2003;Matsuo et al 2010). In our study, only the real Kanji characters possessed the complete set of visual components, including phonological information.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 71%

Neural basis of hierarchical visual form processing of Japanese Kanji characters

Higuchi

Moriguchi²,

Murakami

et al. 2015

Brain and Behavior

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IntroductionWe investigated the neural processing of reading Japanese Kanji characters, which involves unique hierarchical visual processing, including the recognition of visual components specific to Kanji, such as “radicals.”MethodsWe performed functional MRI to measure brain activity in response to hierarchical visual stimuli containing (1) real Kanji characters (complete structure with semantic information), (2) pseudo Kanji characters (subcomponents without complete character structure), (3) artificial characters (character fragments), and (4) checkerboard (simple photic stimuli).ResultsAs we expected, the peaks of the activation in response to different stimulus types were aligned within the left occipitotemporal visual region along the posterior–anterior axis in order of the structural complexity of the stimuli, from fragments (3) to complete characters (1). Moreover, only the real Kanji characters produced functional connectivity between the left inferotemporal area and the language area (left inferior frontal triangularis), while pseudo Kanji characters induced connectivity between the left inferotemporal area and the bilateral cerebellum and left putamen.ConclusionsVisual processing of Japanese Kanji takes place in the left occipitotemporal cortex, with a clear hierarchy within the region such that the neural activation differentiates the elements in Kanji characters' fragments, subcomponents, and semantics, with different patterns of connectivity to remote regions among the elements.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 71%

Neural basis of hierarchical visual form processing of Japanese Kanji characters

Higuchi

Moriguchi²,

Murakami

et al. 2015

Brain and Behavior

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show abstract

“…While kana depends on the dorsal stream from the occipital to the inferior parietal area, Kanji processing relies on the ventral stream from the occipital to the temporal cortex [31,32,17].…”

Section: Bilateral Brain Activation Was Expected and Demonstratedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Different Semantic Processing of Chinese Character and Japanese Kanji in Bilingual Brain

Lin¹,

Zhang²,

et al. 2019

BJSTR

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Chinese and Japanese languages share virtually identical morpho graphic characters invented in ancient China. Although the number of kanji characters that are used is overwhelmingly larger in Chinese than in Japanese, about 70-80% of the characters used in both languages are used to express the same meaning. This urges us to ask whether Chinese characters and Japanese kanjis share the same semantic processing network in the brain of a Chinese-Japanese bilingual or a Japanese-Chinese bilingual. To answer this question, we investigated brain activations associated with Chinese character and Japanese kanji semantic judgment tasks in 13 native Chinese speakers literate in Japanese (Chinese-Japanese bilinguals) and 13 native Japanese speakers literate in Chinese (Japanese-Chinese bilinguals) using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results showed a largely common neural network for semantic processing of Chinese characters and Japanese kanjis in all bilinguals. However, there was also some difference possibly due to different neural strategies adapted by the two groups of bilinguals. We suggest that the Chinese-Japanese bilinguals utilized the usual strategy of directly mapping between orthography to meaning, while the Japanese-Chinese bilinguals utilized a detour pass of linking orthography to phonology to assist determining meanings of the words.

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“…It should be noted, however, that direct comparisons of the results are restricted because of the different magnetic strengths of the MRI scanners (1.5 T in Matsuo et al's study) and the different activation thresholds used between the two studies. Although the averaged number of possible pronunciations for a heterophonic homographic Chinese character is smaller than a heterophonic homographic Japanese kanji, we were still able to observe the differences in phonological processing between reading heterophonic homographic characters and monophonic characters in Chinese, which was attributed to the phonological selection process by Matsuo et al (2010). In the current study, we kept the attribution of phonological selection process in mind, and further extended our discussion in terms of the functional roles of the differential activation between reading heterophonic homographic characters versus monophonic characters.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…A similar approach was implemented in an fMRI study with Japanese kanji, the majority of which have multiple pronunciations. Matsuo et al (2010) As compared with Japanese kanji, the number of alternative pronunciations for the heterophonic homographic characters in Chinese and the proportion of these characters are relatively small. Hence, one may argue that the difference between reading heterophonic homographic characters and monophonic characters might not be as strong in Chinese as in Japanese kanji.…”

Section: Study 2bmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The increased activity with age in the semantic fluency task was found in the right inferior frontal gyrus (BAs 44/45), a region homologous to the Broca's area. The left inferior frontal gyrus has been suggested to be responsible for access and manipulation (Poldrack et al, 1999) or selection (Matsuo et al, 2010;Thompson-Schill, D'Esposito, Aguirre, & Farah, 1997) of phonological and semantic representations, while the right inferior frontal gyrus has been implicated to be selectively upregulated in response to increased task demands in linguistic tasks (Meinzer, Flaisch, et al, 2012). As the semantic fluency task appeared to be more demanding for the older adults, the left inferior frontal gyrus activity alone might not be sufficient to deal with the demands in the access and selection process, and thus the older adults might require the upregulation of activity from the right inferior frontal gyrus to assist their performance.…”

Neural substrates of phonological selection for Japanese character Kanji based on fMRI investigations

Cited by 22 publications

References 65 publications

Neural basis of hierarchical visual form processing of Japanese Kanji characters

Neural basis of hierarchical visual form processing of Japanese Kanji characters

Different Semantic Processing of Chinese Character and Japanese Kanji in Bilingual Brain

Investigating the neural substrates of Chinese character processing

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