Brain activity while reading sentences with kanji characters expressing emotions: an fMRI study on kanji characters expressing “laughter” and “tears”

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the brain activity associated with kanji characters expressing emotion, which are placed at the end of a sentence. Japanese use special kanji characters in brackets at the end of sentences in text messages, such as those sent through e-mail and messaging tools. Such kanji characters have the function of expressing the sender's emotions (such as amusement, laughter, sadness, tears), like emoticons. This is a very simple and effective way to convey the sender's emotions and thoughts to the recipient. In this research, we investigate the effects of emotive kanji characters by using an fMRI study. The experimental results show that both the right and left inferior frontal gyri, which have been implicated in verbal and nonverbal information, were activated. We found that sentences with an emotive kanji character were detected as containing both verbal and nonverbal information, and that sentences with emotive kanji characters enrich communication between the sender and the recipient. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn, 94(5): 1–8, 2011; Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/ecj.10332