Browsing by Author "Wu, Denise H."

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Dynamic brain connectivity attuned to the complexity of relative clause sentences revealed by a single -trial analysis
(2020-08-15)
Xu, Kunyu
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Wu, Denise H.
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Duann, Jeng-Ren
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教育研究所
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Institute of Education
Neural correlates of merging number words
(2015-11-15)
Hung, Yi-Hui
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Pallier, Christophe
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Dehaene, Stanislas
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Lin, Yi-Chen
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Chang, Acer
Complex number words (e.g., "twenty two") are formed by merging together several simple number words (e.g., "twenty" and "two"). In the present study, we explored the neural correlates of this operation and investigated to what extent it engages brain areas involved processing numerical quantity and linguistic syntactic structure. Participants speaking two typologically distinct languages, French and Chinese, were required to read aloud sequences of simple number words while their cerebral activity was recorded by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Each number word could either be merged with the previous ones (e.g., 'twenty three') or not (e.g., 'three twenty'), thus forming four levels ranging from lists of number words to complex numerals. When a number word could be merged with the preceding ones, it was named faster than when it could not. Neuroimaging results showed that the number of merges correlated with activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus and in the left inferior parietal lobule. Consistent findings across Chinese and French participants suggest that these regions serve as the neural bases for forming complex number words in different languages. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Neuroimaging evidence for sensitivity to orthography-to-phonology conversion in native readers and foreign learners of Chinese
(2019-05-01)
Yu, Anya
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Chen, Makayla S. Y.
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Cherodath, Sarika
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Hung, Daisy L.
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Tzeng, Ovid J. L.
Through recent neuroimaging research into brain mechanisms of proficient reading and literacy acquisition in different languages, a common neural network supporting reading has been identified in native readers across various writing systems. However, whether the same or different brain regions are involved in learning to read a foreign language is largely unexplored. To investigate (1) neural correlates of literacy acquisition of Chinese in adults whose learning of this logographic language was relatively late, and (2) to examine which cognitive factors might be predictors of literacy acquisition that would modulate the computation demands on reading-related brain regions, native and non-native Chinese readers were recruited to participate in pronunciation and color verification tasks using Chinese pseudo-phonograms in fMRI while their sensitivity to extracting systematic regularity in nonverbal materials, as well as their IQ and working memory, was measured in a visual statistical learning (VSL) task. The results indicated that native participants activated a left lateralized reading network that is consistent with previous research on orthography-to-phonology conversion (OPC) of Chinese, while a similar but extensive network that also includes regions in the right hemisphere was engaged in the non-natives. Within this network, left inferior frontal sites were found to be crucial to the mapping of Chinese pseudo characters to potential sounds especially in non-natives. More important, only the VSL scores of native and non-native participants, but not their general cognitive abilities, were negatively correlated with the brain activities in the left inferior parietal and left inferior frontal regions, respectively, suggesting that the fundamental capacity of SL supports literacy acquisition through modulating computation demands on the brain regions associated with OPC processing, which is critical to Chinese character recognition.
Neurolinguistic Studies of Reading in Chinese
(2017-01-01)
Tzeng, Ovid J. L.
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Lee, Chia Ying
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Lee, Jun Ren
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Wu, Denise H.
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Lee, Rose R. -W.
Using the Chinese writing system, which is unique with respect to the composition of each character in terms of its graphic shape, as an example, this chapter addresses the neurobiological underpinnings of reading and writing and how these brain circuits are used in different languages. (c) 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Universal brain signature of proficient reading: Evidence from four contrasting languages
(2015-12-15)
Rueckl, Jay G.
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Paz-Alonso, Pedro M.
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Molfese, Peter J.
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Kuo, Wen-Jui
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Bick, Atira
We propose and test a theoretical perspective in which a universal hallmark of successful literacy acquisition is the convergence of the speech and orthographic processing systems onto a common network of neural structures, regardless of how spoken words are represented orthographically in a writing system. During functional-MRI, skilled adult readers of four distinct and highly contrasting languages, Spanish, English, Hebrew, and Chinese, performed an identical semantic categorization task to spoken and written words. Results from three complementary analytic approaches demonstrate limited language variation, with speech-print convergence emerging as a common brain signature of reading proficiency across the wide spectrum of selected languages, whether their writing system is alphabetic or logographic, whether it is opaque or transparent, and regardless of the phonological and morphological structure it represents.