Mirror writing occurs in healthy children, in various pathologies and occasionally in healthy adults. There are only scant experimental data on the underlying brain processes. Eight, right-handed, healthy young adults were scanned (BOLD-fMRI) before and after practicing left-hand mirror-writing (lh-MW) over seven sessions. They wrote dictated…

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) brain scans were obtained from 19 infants at 7 months. Expressive and receptive language performance was assessed at 12 months. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) identified brain regions where gray-matter and white-matter concentrations at 7 months correlated significantly with children's language scores at 12 months.…

Many children and adults have specific reading disabilities; insight into the brain structure underlying these difficulties is evolving from imaging. Previous research highlights the left temporal-parietal white matter as important in reading, yet the degree of involvement of other areas remains unclear. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and…

We tested whether congenital amusics, who exhibit pitch perception deficits, nevertheless adjust the pitch of their voice in response to a sudden pitch shift applied to vocal feedback. Nine amusics and matched controls imitated their own previously-recorded speech or singing, while the online feedback they received was shifted mid-utterance by 25…

The laterality difference in the occipitotemporal region between Chinese (bilaterality) and alphabetic languages (left laterality) has been attributed to their difference in visual appearance. However, these languages also differ in orthographic transparency. To disentangle the effect of orthographic transparency from visual appearance, we trained…

We report a patient showing isolated phonological agraphia after an ischemic stroke involving the left supramarginal gyrus (SMG). In this patient, we investigated the effects of focal repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) given as theta burst stimulation (TBS) over the left SMG, corresponding to the Brodmann area (BA) 40. The patient…

Patients with left hemisphere (LH) or right hemisphere (RH) brain injury due to stroke were tested on a speeded, color discrimination task in which two factors were manipulated: (1) the categorical relationship between the target and the distracters and (2) the visual field in which the target was presented. Similar to controls, the RH patients…

Using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were recorded from two antagonistic muscles, the first dorsal interosseus (FDI) of the hand and the extensor communis digitorum (EC) of the forearm. FDI is involved in grasping actions and EC in releasing. TMS pulses were delivered while participants were reading…

We investigated the neural basis of lexical access to written stimuli in adult dyslexics and normal readers via the Lexicality effect (pseudowords greater than words) and the Frequency effect (low greater than high frequent words). The participants read aloud German words (with low or high lexical frequency) or pseudowords while being scanned. In…

Relative to abstract words, concrete words typically elicit faster response times and larger N400 and N700 event-related potential (ERP) brain responses. These effects have been interpreted as reflecting the denser links to associated semantic information of concrete words and their recruitment of visual imagery processes. Here, we examined…

Reading requires coordinated neural processing across a large number of brain regions. Studying relationships between reading-related regions informs the specificity of information processing performed in each region. Here, regions of interest were defined from a meta-analysis of reading studies, including a developmental study. Relationships…

Neurobiology of reading research has yet to explore whether reliance on the ventral-lexical stream during word reading can be enhanced by the instructed reading strategy, or whether it is impervious to such strategies. We examined Instructions: "name all" vs. "name words" (based on spelling), Word Type: "regular words" vs. "exception words", and…

Some situations require one to quickly stop an initiated response. Recent evidence suggests that rapid stopping engages a mechanism that has diffuse effects on the motor system. For example, stopping the hand dampens the excitability of the task-irrelevant leg. However, it is unclear whether this "global suppression" could apply across wider motor…

This functional MRI study investigated the involvement of the left inferior parietal cortex (IPC) in spoken language production (Speech). Its role has been apparent in some studies but not others, and is not convincingly supported by clinical studies as they rarely include cases with lesions confined to the parietal lobe. We compared Speech with…

This study investigates the contribution of the left and right hemispheres to the comprehension of bilingual figurative language and the joint effects of salience and context on the differential cerebral involvement in idiom processing. The divided visual field and the lexical decision priming paradigms were employed to examine the activation of…