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For phonological processing of written alphabetic words, cortical areas identified here are consistent with the three neural systems proposed previously in the literature: (1) a ventral prefrontal system involving superior portions of left inferior frontal gyrus (2) a left dorsal temporoparietal system including mid-superior temporal gyri and the ventral aspect of inferior parietal cortex (supramarginal region) and (3) a left ventral occipitotemporal system. Four neural systems for the phonological processing of Chinese characters included: (1) a left dorsal lateral frontal system at Brodmann area (BA) 9 (2) the dorsal aspect of left inferior parietal system (3) a bilateral ventral-occipitotemporal system including portions of fusiform gyrus and middle occipital gyms and (4) a left ventral prefrontal system covering the superior aspect of inferior frontal gyrus. It demonstrated high concordance of cortical activity across multiple studies in each written language system as well as significant differences of activation likelihood between languages. We used the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) method to quantitatively synthesize data from 19 published brain mapping studies of phonological processing in reading, six with Chinese and 13 with alphabetic languages.