Words offer a unique opportunity to separate the processing mechanisms of object subcomponents from those of the whole object, because the phonological or semantic information provided by the word subcomponents (i.e., sublexical information) can conflict with that provided by the whole word (i.e., lexical information). Previous studies have revealed some of the specific brain regions and temporal information involved in sublexical information processing. However, a comprehensive spatiotemporal neural network for sublexical processing remains to be fully elucidated due to the low temporal or spatial resolutions of previous neuroimaging studies. In this study, we recorded stereoelectroencephalography signals with high spatial and temporal resolutions from a large sample of 39 epilepsy patients (both sexes) during a Chinese character oral reading task. We explored the activated brain regions and their connectivity related to three sublexical effects: phonological regularity (whether the whole character's pronunciation aligns with its phonetic radical), phonological consistency (whether characters with the same phonetic radical share the same pronunciation), and semantic transparency (whether the whole character's meaning aligns with its semantic radical). The results revealed that sublexical effects existed in the inferior frontal gyrus, precentral and postcentral gyri, temporal lobe, and middle occipital gyrus. Additionally, connectivity from the middle occipital gyrus to the postcentral gyrus and from postcentral gyrus to the fusiform gyrus was associated with the sublexical effects. These findings provide valuable insights into the spatiotemporal dynamics of sublexical processing and object recognition in the brain.

单词提供了一个独特的机会，可以将对象子成分的处理机制与整个对象的处理机制分开，因为单词子成分提供的语音或语义信息（即子词汇信息）可能与整个单词提供的语音或语义信息（即词汇信息）发生冲突。以前的研究揭示了亚词汇信息处理中涉及的一些特定大脑区域和时间信息。然而，由于先前神经影像学研究的时间或空间分辨率较低，用于亚词汇处理的综合时空神经网络仍有待完全阐明。在这项研究中，我们在汉字口语阅读任务中记录了 39 名癫痫患者 （男女） 的大样本中具有高空间和时间分辨率的立体脑电图信号。我们探讨了与三种亚词效相关的激活大脑区域及其连接性：语音规律性（整个字符的发音是否与其语音部首一致）、语音一致性（具有相同语音部首的字符是否具有相同的发音）和语义透明度（整个字符的含义是否与其语义部首一致）。结果显示，额下回、中央前回和中央后回、颞叶和枕中回存在亚词汇效应。此外，从枕中回到中央后回和从中央后回到梭状回的连接与词汇下效应有关。这些发现为大脑中亚词汇处理和对象识别的时空动态提供了有价值的见解。