Different hemodynamic responses in Chinese, Romanised Chinese and English reading tasks

We compared the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) responses in reading tasks of three languages, Chinese, English and Pinyin, a form of Romanised Chinese in FMRI. We found distinct differences between the activation patterns of all three languages. Hemodynamic response functions were also extracted and analyzed and found to show more bilateral activations in the Chinese languages. The strength of the BOLD responses suggest that Romanised Chinese has an activation pattern not too different from those of the English and Chinese languages.