ABSTRACT
Objective To explore the role of the prefrontal cortex in semantic encoding of unrelated word pairs by using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Method Forty-eight subjects were presented unrelated pairs of Chinese words under both the nonsemantic and semantic encoding conditions. Under the nonsemantic condition, subjects judged whether the two words had similar orthographic structures; under the semantic condition, they generated a sentence involving the presented word pairs. The changes of regional blood volume associated with the cognitive tasks were measured by using fNIRS equipment which was a continuous optical imager. Result The regions that corresponded to the prefrontal regions showed greater activation under semantic than nonsemantic condition in both left and right hemispheres, although the extent of the activation was larger in the left than right prefrontal regions. This result was consistent with other neuroimaging studies on unrelated word pairs processing, but did not conform to the strict interpretations of the hemispheric encoding/retrieval asymmetry model (HERA). Conclusion This study suggests that material specificity is one of the important factors to influence hemispheric asymmetry in memory encoding. When associations between items are required, right prefrontal regions participate in the encoding processing as well. It also indicates that fNIRS imaging is a viable method of investigating higher level cognitive processing such as memory.