Neuroimaging methods have been employed to study cue-reactivity-induced neural correlates in the human brain. However, very few studies have focused on characterizing the dynamic neural responses to the factorial interactions between the cues and the subjects. Fifteen right-handed heroin-dependent subjects and 12 age-matched nondrug using subjects participated in this study. Cue-reactivity paradigms were employed, while changes in blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signals were acquired by functional MRI (fMRI). The fMRI datasets were analyzed with AFNI software and repeated two-way ANOVA was employed for factorial analyses. Neural correlates of factorial interactions between cue-factor and subject-factor were identified in the regions of the ventral tegmental area (VTA), the left and right amygdala, the left and right fusiform cortex, and the precuneus in the mesocorticolimbic system, and in the superior frontal, dorsal lateral prefrontal, and orbitofrontal cortices in the prefrontal cortex system. The neural response patterns in the prefrontal systems are dynamic: decreased response to neutral-cues and increased response to heroin-cues. Further, heroin-cue-induced neural responses within the subregions in the PFC system are significantly intercorrelated. In conclusion, the cue-reactivity paradigms significantly activated the dynamic neural activations in the prefrontal system. It is suggested that the dynamic response patterns in the PFC system characterize the impaired brain control functions in heroin-dependent subjects.

Brain activation underlying language processing in Chinese-English bilinguals was examined using fMRI in an orthographic search and a semantic classification task. In both tasks, brain areas activated by Chinese characters and English words were very similar to tasks examining Chinese reading using Chinese pinyin (an alphabetic Chinese script) and Chinese characters. However, the degree of lateralization was different, with English words (second language) causing much more right hemisphere activation than Chinese characters (native language). These differences support the hypothesis that second language usage causes more right hemisphere activation than native language usage.

Objectives To identify the cortical areas engaged during Chinese word processing using func tional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and to examine the reliability and repr oducibility of fMRI for localization of functional areas in the human brain.Methods FMRI data were collected on 8 young, right-handed, native Chinese speakers duri ng performance of Chinese synonym and homophone judgment tasks on two different clinical MRI systems (1.5 T GE Signa Horizon and 1.5 T Siemens Vision). A cro ss correlation analysis was used to statistically generate the activation map.Results Broca's area, Wernicke's area, bilateral extrastriate, and ventral tempo ral cortex were significantly activated during both the synonym and homophone activities. There was essentially no difference between results acquired on two different MRI systems.Conclusions FMRI can be used for localizing cortical areas critical to Chinese language proc essing in the human brain. The results are reliable and well reproducible acros s different clinical MRI systems.