Inter- and intrahemispheric connectivity differences when reading Japanese Kanji and Hiragana.

ABSTRACT: Unlike most languages that are written using a single script, Japanese uses multiple scripts including morphographic Kanji and syllabographic Hiragana and Katakana. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging with dynamic causal modeling to investigate competing theories regarding the neural processing of Kanji and Hiragana during a visual lexical decision task. First, a bilateral model investigated interhemispheric connectivity between ventral occipito-temporal (vOT) cortex and Broca's area ("pars opercularis"). We found that Kanji significantly increased the connection strength from right-to-left vOT. This is interpreted in terms of increased right vOT activity for visually complex Kanji being integrated into the left (i.e. language dominant) hemisphere. Secondly, we used a unila

SUBMITTER: Kawabata Duncan KJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4014181 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature