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Brent Bellamy (University of Alberta), Jacques Brouillette, Bernadette Buszek, Dean Thomas Buszek (Kalamazoo Valley Community College), Dr. John Clark (Western Michigan University), Dr. J. Kevin Corder (Western Michigan University), Dr. Roger Durham (Aquinas College), Dr. Barbara Foley (Rutgers University, Newark), Kana Ikeda, Dr. Danielle Verena Kollig (University of Virginia), Dr. Peter Lawler (University of Manchester). [...]I extend a special thanks to a great mentor and good friend, Dr. Emily Hauptmann (Western Michigan University), for her discerning eye and helpful insights on earlier drafts of this work.

Background Mixed models for repeated measures (MMRM) are widely used as primary analysis models in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological clinical trials due to their robust statistical properties. A central aspect of these models is treating study visits as categorical variables, which limits their application in clinical trial data. Specifically, MMRM cannot accommodate unscheduled visits, leading to a loss of information and increased missing data. Additionally, integrative studies cannot utilize these models for trials with different visit schedules. Lastly, as more wireless and densely spaced data become available, MMRM is not suitable for such data. This study proposes a novel linear B‐spline MMRM (LB‐MMRM) using time as a continuous variable and evaluates its performance against traditional MMRM and cubic spline MMRM methods. Method The LB‐MMRM incorporates linear B‐Spline bases, treating visits as continuous variables. This approach allows the model to include unscheduled visits, making it suitable for integrative study analysis, even when trials have different visit schedules. As a parametric model for longitudinal data, it provides a foundation for handling continuous wireless data. The model will be compared to standard MMRM and the cubic spline model using simulated data that mimic disease progression patterns of CDR‐SB and ADAS‐Cog observed in the Clarity‐AD and TRAILBLAZER‐ALZ 2 trials. The proportional treatment effects will be incorporated into these models to evaluate treatment efficacy over the follow‐up period. Result When only scheduled visit data are used, the proposed LB‐MMRM and common MMRM generate the same results. Additionally, it simplifies the estimation of overall treatment effects and offers a more intuitive interpretation than cubic spline models. Comprehensive simulation results will demonstrate the relative performance of these models. Conclusion The LB‐MMRM is a natural extension of traditional MMRM for regulatory review and clinical application. Its ability to incorporate unscheduled visits, integrate studies with varying visit schedules, and provide intuitive and straightforward implementation makes it a promising alternative to existing models. This approach addresses key limitations in longitudinal clinical trial analyses.

Chinese is a visually complex logographic script that consists of square-shaped characters, with each character composed of strokes. Previous masked priming studies using single-character Chinese stroke neighbors (i.e., visually similar characters differing in only one or two strokes, e.g., 大/犬) have shown facilitatory or inhibitory priming effects. We tested whether the mixed pattern of stroke neighbor priming might be an instance of asymmetry in priming that has been observed previously with Japanese kana and Latin alphabets. Specifically, a prime lacking a stroke (or line segment) that is present in the target speeds up the recognition of its stroke neighbor almost as much as the identity prime (e.g., 刀-刃 = 刃-刃), but not the converse (e.g., 刃-刀 >> 刀-刀). Two experiments, one using a character match task and the second using lexical decision, showed a robust asymmetry in priming by stroke neighbors. The results suggest that the early letter identification process is similar across script types, as anticipated by the Noisy Channel model, which regards the first stage of visual word recognition as a language-universal perceptual process.

•ECoG high‐gamma analysis reveals distinct spatiotemporal reading dynamics.•Kanji reading activates bilateral ventral occipitotemporal cortex early.•Kana reading shows prolonged activation in the left dorsal pathway.•Distinct neural circuits mediate Kanji versus Kana processing. Reading engages complex neural networks integrating visual, phonological, and semantic information. The dual-stream model posits ventral and dorsal pathways for lexical and sublexical processing in the left hemisphere and is well-supported in alphabetic languages. However, its applicability to non-alphabetic scripts remains unclear. The Japanese writing system, comprising Kana (syllabograms) and Kanji (morphograms) with distinct orthographic, phonological, and semantic properties, provides a unique framework to investigate neural dissociation between phonological and orthographic-semantic processing. Previous studies suggest that Kanji relies on the ventral route for whole-word recognition and semantic processing, whereas Kana depends mainly on the dorsal route for phonological decoding via grapheme-to-phoneme conversion; however, their spatiotemporal dynamics remain unknown. Using high-gamma power analysis from electrocorticography recordings in 14 patients with epilepsy and subdural implants, we examined the spatiotemporal neural dynamics of Kana and Kanji reading. Participants completed a visual lexical decision task with Kana and Kanji words and pseudowords. Across 912 electrodes, differential high-gamma power analysis showed that Kanji activated bilateral occipitotemporal fusiform regions early (120–550 ms) and the left inferior temporal gyrus (150–240 ms). Conversely, Kana showed prolonged late activation (270–750 ms) in the left-lateralised superior temporal, supramarginal, and inferior frontal gyri, especially during pseudoword processing. These findings indicate that Kanji relies on bilateral ventral stream earlier, while Kana depends on the left dorsal stream, with slower processing reflecting the extra grapheme-to-phoneme conversion. This underscores the value of non-alphabetic languages in elucidating both universal and script-specific neural mechanisms, advancing a cross-linguistic understanding of the reading network. [Display omitted]

Recent studies have revealed that writing systems exhibit systematic relationships between letter shapes and their corresponding sounds, termed ‘grapho-phonemic systematicity’. This systematicity manifests differently across writing systems: Semitic languages maximize systematicity through pixel count, Chinese through perimetric complexity, and Korean through Hausdorff distance. This study investigated whether native speakers of these languages would prefer the type of systematicity found in their respective writing systems. An online survey was conducted with 845 participants (271 British, 308 Chinese, and 266 Korean) who were asked to match novel symbols from archaic writing systems with given sound pairs. Contrary to the hypothesis that participants would prefer their native writing system’s systematicity pattern, all groups showed a stronger preference for Korean-type systematicity, where similar sounds correspond to topologically similar symbols. This unexpected finding suggests that modern humans might universally prefer certain types of symbol-sound mapping, possibly influenced by institutionalized education and formal logic training. Interestingly, Korean participants showed the least preference for Korean-type systematicity, potentially due to their meta-knowledge of Hangul’s intentional design. The study reveals a disconnect between how writing systems historically evolved and what modern humans prefer, suggesting that cognitive processes in symbol-sound mapping might have been shaped by modern educational frameworks. These findings contribute to our understanding of universal cognitive principles in visual-auditory mapping and the influence of cultural and educational factors on writing system preferences.

The Japanese language has a unique writing system that consists of kanji (morphograms, derived from Chinese characters) and kana (phonograms, a simplified form of kanji representing syllables). A kanji character has two distinct ways of reading: on -reading (Chinese-style pronunciation) and kun -reading (native Japanese pronunciation). Some kanji words have irregular kun -reading called jukujikun . Furthermore, kana characters have two script forms: hiragana (cursive form) and katakana (square form), each of which is used for different purposes. Because of these features, Japanese individuals with alexia and agraphia show characteristic symptoms. Lesion-to-symptom analyses and functional imaging studies developed beginning in the 1970s have reported the following findings: (1) kanji–kana dissociation in alexia/agraphia: pure alexia for kanji or kana, lexical agraphia for kanji, and phonological agraphia for kana; (2) on-kun dissociation in alexia: predominant kun -reading and jukujikun reading impairment in semantic dementia and selective on -reading impairment in the extensive posterior middle temporal gyrus lesion; and (3) allographic agraphia between hiragana and katakana .

Phonological knowledge plays a pivotal role in many aspects of language processing, but it remains controversial whether it is required for writing. In the present study, we examined the issue by focusing on written production in an opaque logographic script (kanji) with highly irregular pronunciation rules, which allowed for a rigorous test of whether or not phonology contributes to writing. Using a phonological priming paradigm in two experiments, we measured response latency while participants orally named target pictures or wrote down their names in kanji. Each target was preceded by a phonographic character (kana) which represented the same sound (mora) as the beginning of the target name or a different mora. By manipulating the degree of phonological overlap between primes and target names (i.e., morae, consonants and vowels), we found that only the moraic overlap could speed up word production in logographic writing (Experiment 1). In contrast, naming response was facilitated by mora-overlap as well as vowel-overlap. This between-task difference in phonological encoding suggests that phonological codes for spoken production do not necessarily precede orthographic access during logographic writing. In Experiment 2, we further found that the facilitatory effects of moraic information did not differ in magnitude between writing and naming when primes were masked and presented more briefly, suggesting a net component of bottom-up phonological activation which contributes to logographic writing. Collectively, we propose that orthographic codes of kanji are accessed directly from semantics, whereas phonology plays a non-specific modulatory role to enhance neurocognitive systems involved in writing.

This article examines the use of the Mycenaean titular term ra-wa-ke-ta 'leader of the people' (spelling lāwāgetās , continued mainly as Dor. λᾱγέτᾱς) in post-Mycenaean Greek literature, demonstrating the textual and semantic diachrony of this culturally important term through a detailed survey of its usage in the classical period in comparison with the Linear B materials. Following its peculiar absence in Homer and early epics, in Ibycus and Pindar the word lāwāgetās exhibits a semantic shift from its administrative and militaristic denotation as shown in the palace documents to being chiefly used as an epithet for mythical and heroic figures. The word is further attested in Sophocles fr.221 where the title is applied to a female character. We will conclude the discussion with a brief look at what traces of λᾱγέτᾱς are preserved in names and lexicography before it finally disappeared in the extant Greek materials

Given the typological differences between the Indo-European languages, which are fusional, and Japanese, which is agglutinative, the debate around the measuring unit of Japanese word length is unsurprising. This study delved into diachronic issues and calculated word length in Old, Early Middle, Middle, Early Modern, and Modern Japanese using data from eight writing systems, including 21 genres. This study aimed to clarify how word length distribution has shifted throughout history. The findings revealed that word length is associated with the writing system. Old Japanese bore the longest length, as it was utterly logographic. Since Early Middle Japanese, Japanese text has been written using a phonographic and logographic mix, and word length appears shorter. Furthermore, word length is associated with the diversity of genres. Moreover, an investigation of word length and frequency indicated that textbooks, sharehon, ninjoohon, and tales, which appeared after the Nara Period and used mixed Chinese character and kana writing, fit into the power law function.

This article analyses orthographic variation in the Linear B tablets from the Mycenaean palace of Pylos. Despite the general consistency in spelling found in Linear B texts from all sites, variation was in certain cases both permissible and entirely normal, even within the work of a single writer. Examining the patterns of orthographic variation found in the texts from Pylos, along with the factors which may have influenced this variation, sheds light on how the Mycenaean scribes were taught to write and how they applied this training in the process of creating their documents.