Language experience shapes fusiform activation when processing a logographic artificial language: An fMRI training study

Gui Xue,Chuansheng Chen,Zhen Jin,Qi Dong

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.11.055

Gui Xue, Chuansheng Chen + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.11.055

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Abstract

The significant role of the left midfusiform cortex in reading found in recent neuroimaging studies has led to the visual word form area (VWFA) hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that years of experience reading native language change the visual expertise of this region to be especially sensitive to the visual form of native language. The present study aimed at testing this hypothesis by exploring the role of language experience in shaping the fusiform activation. We designed a logographic artificial language (LAL) using the visual form and pronunciation of Korean Hangul characters (but their correspondence was shuffled) and assigning arbitrary meanings to these characters. Twelve native Chinese Mandarin speakers (6 male and 6 female, 18 to 21 years old) with no prior knowledge of Korean language were trained in the visual form of these characters for 2 weeks, followed by 2 weeks each of phonological and semantic training. Behavioral data indicated that training was effective in increasing the efficiency of visual form processing and establishing the connections among visual form, sounds, and meanings. Imaging data indicated that at the pre-training stage, subjects showed stronger activation in the fusiform regions for LAL than for Chinese across both one-back visual matching task and the passive viewing task. Visual form training significantly decreased the activation of bilateral fusiform cortex and the left inferior occipital cortex, whereas phonological training increased activation in these regions, and the right fusiform remained more active after semantic training. Increased activations after phonological and semantic training were also evident in other regions involved in language processing. These findings thus do not seem to be consistent with the visual-expertise-induced-sensitivity hypothesis about fusiform regions. Instead, our results suggest that visual familiarity, phonological processing, and semantic processing all make significant but different contributions to shaping the fusiform activation.

Highlights

Benefited from the development of neural imaging techniques, one striking advance in our understanding of language representation in the brain is the discovery of left midfusiform cortex’s involvement in reading
reading development involves the acquisition of these components
the present artificial language training study for the first time shows that different aspects of the language experience

Summary

Introduction

Benefited from the development of neural imaging techniques, one striking advance in our understanding of language representation in the brain is the discovery of left midfusiform cortex’s involvement in reading. Children with reading difficulties have abnormal fusiform function compared to their normal counterparts (see Habib, 2000 for a review) These findings have triggered the reevaluation of the neuropsychological data, as well as the revision of the morethan-one-century-old neural model of reading by incorporating the left midfusiform region in the reading network (e.g., Jobard et al, 2003; Price, 2000). Others tend to suggest the VWFA might be involved in lexical, multimodal word processing (Kronbichler et al, 2004; Hillis et al, 2005 for most recent neuropsychological results), or in integrating phonology and visual information during both word and picture processing (Price and Friston, 2005)

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