Phonological influences on lexicosemantic processing of kanji words

To investigate the phonological influences on the lexicosemantic process with a strong orthographic constraint, we used kanji (morphogram) homophone words and measured, using magnetoencephalography, the neural activities during the silent reading of prime-target pairs. The primes were phonologically the same as or different from the targets or pseudocharacters. The neural activities in the left posterior temporal and inferior parietal areas became weaker with phonological repetition. Furthermore, stronger activities for the different condition in the left anterior temporal area and for the same condition in the left inferior frontal cortex, respectively, suggest the roles of these areas of the brain in the semantic processing of words and in the selection of appropriate meanings. We conclude that phonological information affects the lexicosemantic process even with a strong orthographic constraint.