Many language studies, particularly in fMRI, use the subtraction paradigm, in which brain activation in a task thought to involve some aspect of language processing is compared against activation in a baseline task thought to involve similar non-linguistic processes but not to involve the linguistic process. For example, activations while participants read words may be compared to baseline activations while participants read strings of random letters (in attempt to isolate activation related to lexical processing—the processing of real words), or activations while participants read syntactically complex sentences may be compared to baseline activations while participants read simpler sentences.