title: Involvement of motor cortices in retrieval of kanji studied by functional MRI.
abstract: Functional magnetic resonance imaging was successfully used to study the activation of the motor cortices during retrieval of Japanese ideogram, kanji. The subjects performed kanji completion tasks to generate a kanji in response to an element which is always written first. In most of the subjects, the contralateral premotor cortex, the presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA) and the bilateral intraparietal sulcus were activated during retrieval of kanji without actual writing nor intentional mental writing. Activation associated with actual writing was shown in the contralateral primary sensorimotor cortex and the SMA proper. These results suggested that retrieval of kanji would share the neural basis of motor representation with writing of kanji except for regions directly working for motor output.
authors.affiliation: Department of Management Information, Toyohashi Sozo College, Japan.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kato
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Isoda
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Takehara
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Matsuo
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Moriya
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nakai
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D007807:Language Tests; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D014956:Writing