Ideographic characters call for extra processing to correspond with phonemes.
Cortical areas used in the copying of Japanese ideographic characters and syllabic characters were studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging in healthy volunteers. Complexity of characters was controlled to illustrate differences resulting from character to sound conversion differences between the ideographic and syllabic characters. Statistical comparisons indicated extensive activation in the fusiform gyrus, posterior portions around the intraparietal sulcus and in the conjunction area of BA 6, 9 and 44 (which is assumed to be Exner's area) during the copying of ideographic characters. These findings suggested that indirectness between ideographic characters and their pronunciation demands extra processing such as semantic mediation and intensive grapheme processing in comparison with syllabic characters.
Matsuo
K
K
Medical Vision Laboratory, Life Electronics Research Center, AIST, 1-8-31 Midorigaoka, Ikeda, Osaka 563-8577, Japan.
Kato
C
C
Ozawa
F
F
Takehara
Y
Y
Isoda
H
H
Isogai
S
S
Moriya
T
T
Sakahara
H
H
Okada
T
T
Nakai
T
T
D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D006236:Handwriting; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading