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In this paper, we describe a person's brain activity when he or she sees an emoticon at the end of a sentence. An emoticon consists of some characters that resemble the human face and expresses the sender's emotions. With the help of a computer network, we use e-mail, messaging, avatars, and so on, in order to communicate with a recipient. Moreover, we send an emotional expression by using an emoticon at the end of a sentence. In this research, we investigate the effect of an emoticon as nonverbal information, using an fMRI study. The experimental results show that the right and left inferior frontal gyrus were activated and we detect a sentence with an emoticon as the verbal and nonverbal information. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn, 94(5): 17-24, 2011; Published online in Wiley Online Library (). DOI 10.1002/ecj.10311 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 (). DOI 10.1002/ecj.10332 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]