Spatiotemporal study on recognition of Japanese words : Comparison of Kanji and Hiragana

抄録

The authors recorded nineteen-channel event-related potentials (ERPs) during recognition of two types of Japanese character ; Kanji (Chinese characters) and Hiragana (one type of phonetic characters). By field-sequential stereoscopic 3D display with liquid crystal shutter, a word and a non-word were simultaneously and independently presented to the left (right) eye and right (left) one, respectively. Each word consists of two Kanji or three Hiragana characters. Three subjects were instructed to press a button when understanding the meaning of the visual stimuli after 3000 ms poststimulus. Equivalent current dipole source localization (ECDL) with three unconstrained ECD was applied to the ERPs. For both Kanji and Hiragana, the ECDs were localized at the occipital and inferior temporal gyrus at 200 400ms, and those at the Wernicke area at 300 600ms. The latter ECD for one left-handed subject was localized at the homologue of Wernicke area.