Neuronal correlates of consistency and frequency effects on Chinese character naming: an event-related fMRI study

This event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (efMRI) study aims to investigate the central representations of Chinese orthography-to-phonology transformation (OPT) by simultaneously manipulating character frequency and consistency. Bilateral inferior frontal cortices (including Broca's area and insula), the left temporoparietal region (superior parietal gyrus and supramarginal gyrus), and the left temporal-occipital junction showed greater activation, especially in low-frequency conditions, when naming inconsistent characters as compared to consistent ones. These findings suggest that these regions are involved in the sublexical conversion of orthographic input into phonological codes in naming Chinese. The similar activation pattern found in these three regions suggests a distributed process, rather than separate neural routes, for lexical and sublexical OPT. In addition, the regions involved in Chinese OPT are congruent with the findings for reading alphabetic scripts and indicate that the neuronal mechanisms for orthography-to-phonology transformation is domain universal across different writing systems.

[1]  C. Hue.  Recognition Processes in Character Naming , 1992 .

[2]  Hideaki Fujita,et al.  Left supramarginal/angular gyri activation during reading of syllabograms in the Japanese language , 1991, Journal of Neurolinguistics.

[3]  J. Fletcher,et al.  Brain mechanisms for reading: the role of the superior temporal gyrus in word and pseudoword naming , 2000, Neuroreport.

[4]  Thomas Crump,et al.  Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems. , 1990 .

[5]  Kara D. Federmeier,et al.  Timed picture naming in seven languages , 2003, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[6]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  The Effects of Presentation Rate During Word and Pseudoword Reading: A Comparison of PET and fMRI , 2000, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[7]  Stephen M. Kosslyn,et al.  Encoding words and pictures: A positron emission tomography study , 1996, Neuropsychologia.

[8]  P T Fox,et al.  An fMRI study with written Chinese , 2001, Neuroreport.

[9]  G. Humphreys,et al.  Segregating Semantic from Phonological Processes during Reading , 1997, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[10]  S. Lupker,et al.  Effects of word frequency and spelling-to-sound regularity in naming with and without preceding lexical decision. , 2000, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[11]  A. Mechelli,et al.  Neuroimaging Studies of Word and Pseudoword Reading: Consistencies, Inconsistencies, and Limitations , 2003, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[12]  James L. McClelland,et al.  Conspiracy effects in word pronunciation. , 1987 .

[13]  Paul W. B. Atkins,et al.  Models of reading aloud: Dual-route and parallel-distributed-processing approaches. , 1993 .

[14]  B. Horwitz,et al.  Phonological and orthographic components of word recognition. A PET-rCBF study. , 1997, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[15]  Y. T. Wu,et al.  A left-lateralized network for reading Chinese words: a 3 T fMRI study , 2001, Neuroreport.

[16]  D. Hung,et al.  Use of phonological codes for Chinese characters: Evidence from processing of parafoveal preview when reading sentences , 2004, Brain and Language.

[17]  Yiping Chen,et al.  Effects of Word Form on Brain Processing of Written Chinese , 2002, NeuroImage.

[18]  G. Underwood.  Strategies of information processing , 1980 .

[19]  James L. McClelland,et al.  Understanding normal and impaired word reading: computational principles in quasi-regular domains. , 1996, Psychological review.

[20]  L. Tan,et al.  Phonological codes as early sources of constraint in Chinese word identification: A review of current discoveries and theoretical accounts , 1998 .

[21]  I. Kanazawa,et al.  Different cortical activity in reading of Kanji words, Kana words and Kana nonwords. , 2000, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[22]  Mark S. Seidenberg.  The time course of phonological code activation in two writing systems , 1985, Cognition.

[23]  Richard S. J. Frackowiak,et al.  The neural correlates of the verbal component of working memory , 1993, Nature.

[24]  P. Fox,et al.  The Neural System Underlying Chinese Logograph Reading , 2001, NeuroImage.

[25]  S. Petersen,et al.  Effects of Lexicality, Frequency, and Spelling-to-Sound Consistency on the Functional Anatomy of Reading , 1999, Neuron.

[26]  J. Ashburner,et al.  Nonlinear spatial normalization using basis functions , 1999, Human brain mapping.

[27]  Tzu-Chen Yeh,et al.  Frequency effects of Chinese character processing in the brain: an event-related fMRI study , 2003, NeuroImage.

[28]  M. Mintun,et al.  Regional cerebral blood flow during word and nonword reading , 1997, Human brain mapping.

[29]  Jie-Li Tsai,et al.  Consistency, Regularity, and Frequency Effects in Naming Chinese Characters , 2005 .

[30]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  How Many Subjects Constitute a Study? , 1999, NeuroImage.

[31]  Henry S. R. Kao,et al.  Linguistics, psychology, and the Chinese language , 1986 .

[32]  M. Chee,et al.  Mandarin and English Single Word Processing Studied with Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging , 1999, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[33]  O Josephs,et al.  Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging: modelling, inference and optimization. , 1999, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[34]  M Coltheart,et al.  DRC: a dual route cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. , 2001, Psychological review.

[35]  R. C. Oldfield.  The assessment and analysis of handedness: the Edinburgh inventory. , 1971, Neuropsychologia.

[36]  M. Botvinick,et al.  Conflict monitoring and cognitive control. , 2001, Psychological review.

[37]  S. Petersen,et al.  Neuroimaging studies of word reading. , 1998, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[38]  L. Katz,et al.  Functional neuroimaging studies of reading and reading disability (developmental dyslexia). , 2000, Mental retardation and developmental disabilities research reviews.

[39]  M. Chee,et al.  Overlap and Dissociation of Semantic Processing of Chinese Characters, English Words, and Pictures: Evidence from fMRI , 2000, NeuroImage.

[40]  M. Coltheart.  Lexical access in simple reading tasks , 1978 .

[41]  J. Fiez.  Phonology, Semantics, and the Role of the Left Inferior Prefrontal Cortex , 2022 .

[42]  Richard S. J. Frackowiak,et al.  Functional anatomy of a common semantic system for words and pictures , 1996, Nature.

[43]  R. Glushko.  The Organization and Activation of Orthographic Knowledge in Reading Aloud. , 1979 .

[44]  P T Fox,et al.  Brain activation in the processing of Chinese characters and words: A functional MRI study , 2000, Human brain mapping.

[45]  T. Shallice,et al.  Recollection and Familiarity in Recognition Memory: An Event-Related Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study , 1999, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[46]  Debra Jared,et al.  Spelling-Sound Consistency Affects the Naming of High-Frequency Words , 1997 .

[47]  Colin M. Brown,et al.  The Neural Circuitry Involved in the Reading of German Words and Pseudowords: A PET Study , 1999, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[48]  R. Frackowiak,et al.  Demonstrating the implicit processing of visually presented words and pseudowords. , 1996, Cerebral cortex.

[49]  R. Buckner,et al.  Common Prefrontal Regions Coactivate with Dissociable Posterior Regions during Controlled Semantic and Phonological Tasks , 2002, Neuron.

[50]  P. Matthews,et al.  Testing for Dual Brain Processing Routes in Reading: A Direct Contrast of Chinese Character and Pinyin Reading Using fMRI , 2002, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[51]  James L. McClelland,et al.  A distributed, developmental model of word recognition and naming. , 1989, Psychological review.

[52]  M. Torrens.  Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268 , 1990 .

[53]  Andrew C. N. Chen,et al.  Event-Related Functional MRI Study on Central Representation of Acute Muscle Pain Induced by Electrical Stimulation , 2002, NeuroImage.

[54]  R. Turner,et al.  Detecting Latency Differences in Event-Related BOLD Responses: Application to Words versus Nonwords and Initial versus Repeated Face Presentations , 2002, NeuroImage.

[55]  M. Botvinick,et al.  Anterior cingulate cortex, error detection, and the online monitoring of performance. , 1998, Science.

[56]  John C. Gore,et al.  Predicting reading performance from neuroimaging profiles: The cerebral basis of phonological effects in printed word identification , 1996, NeuroImage.

[57]  K Takeda,et al.  Kanji word reading process analysed by positron emission tomography. , 1992, Neuroreport.

[58]  C. Fiebach,et al.  fMRI Evidence for Dual Routes to the Mental Lexicon in Visual Word Recognition , 2002, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[59]  C. Price,et al.  Three Distinct Ventral Occipitotemporal Regions for Reading and Object Naming , 1999, NeuroImage.

[60]  Mark S. Seidenberg,et al.  When does irregular spelling or pronunciation influence word recognition , 1984 .

[61]  P. Pietrini,et al.  Conjoint and extended neural networks for the computation of speech codes: the neural basis of selective impairment in reading words and pseudowords. , 2001, Cerebral cortex.