Functional magnetic resonance imaging localization of tactile reading phonograms in Japanese subjects.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is used to investigate the neural basis for tactile reading of Japanese phonograms (kana) with the left hands of six normal right-handed Japanese subjects. Both the tactile reading and recognition tasks activated the areas surrounding the left and right central sulci in all subjects. The region surrounding the left intraparietal sulcus was activated during the tactile reading task in all subjects, whereas the region was activated during the tactile recognition task in only two subjects. These results suggest the bilateral central sulcus areas participate in the manipulatory movement of the left hand and processing of the somatosensory information, and the left intraparietal sulcus area participates inevitably, in the tactile reading of Japanese phonograms. Our experiments support the essential role of the intraparietal sulcus area in the phonogram-reading process.