Brain activation of reading Korean words and recognizing pictures by Korean native speakers: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Even though the Korean words are characterized as phonemes like other alphabetic languages, their shape resembles much more morphemes like Chinese characters. The main purpose of the study is to explore neural mechanisms of reading Korean words and recognizing pictures by Korean native speakers using functional magnetic resonance imaging technique. In the experimental results, the authors could see commonly activated areas in occipito-temporal region bilaterally, whereas frontal and temporal region was activated only while reading Korean words. Left middle frontal activation of Korean words was regarded to be involved in the phonological and semantic processing. Right anterior cingulate (BA 32) activation seems to be related with language and sound organization and superior temporal (BA 29) activation might be involved in the processing of phonological system to which tonal information is attached. Right medial frontal (BA 8) activation was reported in the results. The authors suggest the activation of this area is related with nonverbal visual higher order control or visuospatial analysis of Korean words in their experimental tasks.

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