Language-specific cortical activation patterns for verbal fluency tasks in Japanese as assessed by multichannel functional near-infrared spectroscopy

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• 作者：Haruka Dan ; Ippeita Dan ; Toshifumi Sano ; Yasushi Kyutoku ; Keiji Oguro ; Hidenori Yokota ; Daisuke Tsuzuki ; Eiju Watanabe
• 关键词：Semantic word fluency ; Phonological word fluency ; Mora ; Syllable ; fNIRS ; Optical topography ; Culture-specificity ; Aphasia ; Attention ; Task difficulty
• 刊名：Brain and Language
• 出版年：2013
• 出版时间：August, 2013
• 年：2013
• 卷：126
• 期：2
• 页码：208-216
• 全文大小：1158 K

文摘

In Japan, verbal fluency tasks are commonly utilized as a standard paradigm for neuropsychological testing of cognitive and linguistic abilities. The Japanese ¡°letter fluency task¡± is a mora/letter fluency task based on the phonological and orthographical characteristics of the Japanese language. Whether there are similar activation patterns across languages or a Japanese-specific mora/letter fluency pattern is not certain. We investigated the neural correlates of overt mora/letter and category fluency tasks in healthy Japanese. The category fluency task activated the bilateral fronto-temporal language-related regions with left-superior lateralization, while the mora/letter fluency task led to wider activation including the inferior parietal regions (left and right supramarginal gyrus). Specific bilateral supramarginal activation during the mora/letter fluency task in Japanese was distinct from that of similar letter fluency tasks in syllable-alphabet-based languages: this might be due to the requirement of additional phonological processing and working memory, or due to increased cognitive load in general.