Seeing Chinese characters in action: an fMRI study of the perception of writing sequences

Abstract

The Chinese character is composed of a finite set of strokes whose order in writing follows consensual principles and is learnt through school education. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this study investigates the neural activity associated with the perception of writing sequences by asking participants to observe stroke-by-stroke display of characters. Violations were introduced by reversing the writing order of two or three successive strokes. Compared with the correct sequences, both types of violation engendered more activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) while the two-stroke reversal elicited additional activation in the supplementary motor area and the three-stroke reversal elicited additional activation in the left fusiform area and the right inferior temporal gyrus. Compared with either type of incorrect sequences, the correct sequences elicited activation in the bilateral dorsal premotor areas and left superior parietal lobule. These findings suggest that a domain-general sequence processing network is implicated in the perception of Chinese character writing and that the left fusiform encodes not only the visual configuration but also the dynamic aspect of the writing script.