Neural mechanisms underlying semantic and orthographic processing in Chinese –English bilinguals
Neuroreport2003Vol. 14(12), pp. 1557–1562
Citations Over TimeTop 16% of 2003 papers
Guosheng Ding, Conrad Perry, Danling Peng, Lin Ma, Dejun Li, Shiyong Xu, Qian Luo, Duo Xu, Jing Yang
Abstract
Brain activation underlying language processing in Chinese-English bilinguals was examined using fMRI in an orthographic search and a semantic classification task. In both tasks, brain areas activated by Chinese characters and English words were very similar to tasks examining Chinese reading using Chinese pinyin (an alphabetic Chinese script) and Chinese characters. However, the degree of later-alization was different, with English words (second language) causing much more right hemisphere activation than Chinese characters (native language). These differences support the hypothesis that second language usage causes more right hemisphere activation than native language usage.