Abstract: The present study aims at exploring the different brain regions involved in the processing of “reading and writing” and “read-only” styles. The experimental materials are the “reading and writing” of simplified Chinese characters and the “read-only” of traditional Chinese characters that were matched in the strokes and familiarity. Eight college students were tested to read silently the simplified Chinese characters and the traditional Chinese characters during the magnetic resonance scan. the whole brain activations were acquired with ANOVA. Compared with the “reading and writing” of simplified Chinese characters, the “read-only” of traditional Chinese characters activated the right inferior frontal gyrus and the left cerebellum. The common functional connection brain regions include: the left precuneus-left medial frontal gyrus, left precuneus-left precentral gyrus and right middle occipital gyrus-left lingual gyrus. Quite contrarily, the left precuneus was related to the right precuneus in processing of traditional Chinese characters, while the left precuneus was related to the right precuneus middle frontal gyrus in processing of simplified Chinese characters. The left medial frontal gyrus and precentral gyrus showed high relativity only to traditional Chinese characters. The differences in brain areas between simplified Chinese characters and traditional Chinese characters consist of the left middle temporal gyrus and right inferior parietal lobule. The “read-only” characters are characterized by their integrity and outline, whose pronunciations characterized by integrity, are similar to the irregular simplified Chinese characters. traditional Chinese characters were less familiar to the subjects than simplified Chinese characters. Although, both traditional and simplified Chinese characters have the same functional connection area in processing, they have great difference. The differences in the right cerebral hemisphere exist in different connection area, and the differences also exist between the left medial frontal gyrus and precentral gyrus. The parietal lobe is important for the processing of recognition memory.

Key words: reading-only without writing, reading and writing, the traditional Chinese characters, the simplified Chinese characters, functional magnetic resonance