Left hemisphere activation during processing of morphologically complex word forms in adults

Functional neuroanatomy of the processing of morphologically complex words was studied by measuring regional brain activity by positron emission tomog raphy (PET) during encoding of auditorily presented inflected versus monomo rphemic Finnish nouns. Significant increases of activation occurred particu larly in the left inferior posterior frontal robe, corresponding to Broca's area. This suggests that besides their role in the production of grammatic al morphology documented earlier, Broca's area and adjacent regions are imp ortant for the input processing of morphologically complex words. (C)1999 E lsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.