Objective: To study the linguistic-functional cortex and identify the effect of age and sex on normal language processing by ER-fMRI and to observe whether a left or right predominance for linguistic-functional cortex exits or not.
Methods: A total of 50 healthy Chinese volunteers with right-hand dominance were divided into 4 groups according to gender and age: Group A, young male (< or =50 yr); Group B, young female ( < OR =50 yr); Group C, old male ( >50 yr); Group D, old female ( >50 yr). Each group finished 2 tasks of reading Chinese words loudly and silently.
Results: There were no statistical differences of activated voxel and intensity changes in linguistically functional cortex between healthy male and female individuals of different decades. The activated areas include bilateral frontal lobe, temporal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe and bilateral cerebellar hemisphere. And there were no statistical difference of activated voxel and intensity changes in bilateral activated areas. Although the activated areas were not quite the same between two tasks and more activation elicited by overt-reading, but there was no statistical difference of activated voxel and intensity changes in the same activated areas.
Conclusion: There is no age and gender difference in linguistic-function regions of healthy individual whose native language is Chinese. It is bilateral-equilibrium and no linguistic hemisphere's predominance exits. This characteristic is different from the left-hemisphere dominance of western languages. Although there is no statistical difference of activated voxel and intensity change between overt-reading and covert-reading, the activated areas of covert-reading are so unreliable that the way of covert-reading to study the linguistic-function regions of human brain is improper to some extent.