Verb Generation in Japanese—A Multicenter PET Activation Study

Abstract Cerebral blood flow (CBF) during silent verb generation was measured at four Japanese PET centers. To minimize the variance of the measurement, speakers of a single language (Japanese) served as subjects and experimental conditions at the four PET centers were controlled as much as possible. Two types of activation patterns were observed: activations in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortices and the medial frontal cortex (at the two centers with a 2D PET scanner) and additional activation in the left posterior temporal cortex (at the two centers with a 3D scanner). This suggests either a difference in the sensitivity of the two types of PET scanners (viz., a 3D scanner is generally more sensitive than a 2D scanner) and/or subject bias due to the small number of subjects at the individual centers. The pooled activation pattern was fundamentally similar to activation patterns obtained in the previous studies for verb generation in English and other European languages, suggesting that regions for verb generation are independent of particular languages. Regions relevant to verb generation are discussed.