Brain activation during phonological and semantic processing of Chinese characters in deaf signers.

ABSTRACT: Previous studies found altered brain function in deaf individuals reading alphabetic orthographies. However, it is not known whether similar alterations of brain function are characteristic of non-alphabetic writing systems and whether alterations are specific to certain kinds of lexical tasks. Here we examined differences in brain activation between Chinese congenitally deaf individuals (CD) and hearing controls (HC) during character reading tasks requiring phonological and semantic judgments. For both tasks, we found that CD showed less activation than HC in left inferior frontal gyrus, but greater activation in several right hemisphere regions including inferior frontal gyrus, angular gyrus, and inferior temporal gyrus. Although many group differences were similar across tasks, greater

SUBMITTER: Li Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3997016 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature