Ideographic characters call for extra processing to correspond with phonemes

Cortical areas used in the copying of Japanese ideographic characters and s yllabic characters were studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging in healthy volunteers. Complexity of characters was controlled to illustra te differences resulting from character to sound conversion differences bet ween the ideographic and syllabic characters. Statistical comparisons indic ated extensive activation in the fusiform gyrus, posterior portions around the intraparietal sulcus and in the conjunction area of BA 6, 9 and 44 (whi ch is assumed to be Exner's area) during the copying of ideographic charact ers. These findings suggested that indirectness between ideographic charact ers and their pronunciation demands extra processing such as semantic media tion acid intensive grapheme processing in comparison with syllabic charact ers. NeuroReport 12:2227-2230 (C) 2001 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.