Localization of motor language functional area in normal people whose native language is Chinese

Zhonghua YANG; Jingbo CAO

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:

Chinese character is the only non-alphabetic system of writing, the patterns of semantic symbol, phonetic symbol and sign in the cognition of Chinese characters, it is the combination of form, sound and meaning, and its cognitive pattern, pathway, analytical judgement of semantic and storage are different from those of western alphabetic system of writing, and the processing of Chinese characters maydifferent from that of alphabetic system of writing.

OBJECTIVE:

To localize the motor language center of the healthy volunteers whose native language is Chinese by means of the equivalent current dipole (ECD) and synthetic aperture magnetometry (SAM) of magnetoen cephalography (MEG).

DESIGN:

A single-sample univariate analysis.

SETTING:

Department of Neurology, Beijing Tiantan Hospital affiliated to Capital University of Medical Sciences.

PARTICIPANTS:

Ten healthy volunteers whose native language is Chinese were selected from the postgraduates and training participants in the Department of Neurology, Beijing Tiantan Hospital affiliated to Capital University of Medical Sciences between July 2003 and April 2005, they were all right handedness and had no speech disorders and cognitive impairments, and all accepted training of language task.

METHODS:

All the healthy subjects were given the language task stimulation of reading words and pseudowords silently, the number of the silently read nouns, appearing time for each noun and the interval between two tasks were strictly matched, ① Words were the common high-frequency characters, accorded to the law of Chinese characters components, and had 4-13 strokes. ② Pseudowords, composed by Chinese characters made-up software, accorded to the made-up law of Chinese character, but could not compose the stroke assemble of the character, and had 4-13 strokes. The evoked magnetic field produced after the stimulation was recorded with MEG, the collected data were overlapped with MRI to obtain the localization of language functional areas.

RESULTS:

All the 10 volunteers finished the test and entered the analysis of results. Both words and pseudowords evoked obvious late magnetic reaction waves in bilateral cerebral hemispheres, the motor language centers both located at posterior inferior frontal gyrus.

CONCLUSION:

The motor and classic motor language centers are general concordant in the normal people whose native language is Chinese, that was to say, the motor language center localizes at posterior inferior frontal gyrus of normal people whose native language is Chinese.