Neural basis of Chinese phonological processing under picture stimulus A functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Studies concerning phonological processing mainly use written stimuli. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to investigate the brain regions related to the phonological processing under the picture stimulus in the rhyme task of Chinese language. Results of the test in 13 healthy college students whose native language is Chinese showed the extensive activation in the frontal lobe, parietal lobe and the occipitotemporal cortex, including the inferior frontal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus and medial occipitotemporal gyrus under the picture stimuli. Moreover, phonological processing induced activation in the superior temporal gyrus （BA 22） under the picture stimuli, but activation was not found in the middle temporal gyrus.

Evidence in Support of Analogical Reasoning Improvements with Executive Attention Intervention in Healthy Young Adults

Analogical reasoning improvement is important in educational outcome improvement.Inspired by recent ideas and evidence,we applied anti-saccade task training as an executive attention intervention and tested whether it could improve analogical reasoning performance.A serial-task paradigm was applied where participants performed an anti-saccade followed by an analogical reasoning task including a perception condition.The experimental group finished the anti-saccade task in which the ratio of anti-saccade trials to pro-saccade trials was 5:1 while the counterpart was 1:1 in the active control group.Also,a blank control group was established where participants merely finished the analogical reasoning task.Event-related electroencephalographic(EEG)data were recorded when participants were performing the executive attention and analogical reasoning tasks.In addition,their resting state EEG was collected before and after the executive attention intervention.Behaviorally,the experimental group reacted significantly faster than the other two groups in analogical reasoning but not in perception.At the neural level,in the experimental group alone,the anti-saccade trials elicited a smaller N2 than pro-saccade trials and the resting alpha power was improved after executive attention intervention.No significant difference in P2 was found between the two groups in analogical reasoning or perception but the experimental group showed a larger late positive component than the active control group in analogical reasoning.We also found that the late positive component mediated the relationship between the N2 of anti-saccade trials and analogical reasoning reaction times in the experimental group.We further discussed the role of executive attention in the analogical reasoning process,which may pave the way for the future reliable improvement of fluid intelligence.