Dissociation in the neural basis underlying Chinese tone and vowel production

Neuropsychologists have debated over whether the processing of segmental and suprasegmental units involves different neural mechanisms. Focusing on the production of Chinese lexical tones (suprasegmental units) and vowels (segmental units), this study used the adaptation paradigm to investigate a possible neural dissociation for tone and vowel production. Ten native Chinese speakers were asked to name Chinese characters and pinyin (Romanized phonetic system for Chinese language) that varied in terms of tones and vowels. fMRI results showed significant differences in the right inferior frontal gyrus between tone and vowel production (more activation for tones than for vowels). Brain asymmetry analysis further showed that tone production was less left-lateralized than vowel production, although both showed left-hemisphere dominance.