A reply to Gregory Hickok, Ursula Bellugi, & Edward S. Klima's (1998) commentary on results from H. Neville's et al (1998) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of native deaf & hearing signers processing American Sign Language & written English focuses on the finding of right-hemisphere (RH) activation in deaf signers. Four studies in which RH activation was observed in spoken language processing are cited, & differences between these studies' results & the Neville et al results are discussed. Hickok, Bellugi, & Klima's suggestion that RH activation was observed due to a comparison with written English processing is refuted, & possible explanations are offered for the different results obtained in Neville et al vs studies of aphasia in left-hemisphere-damaged signers.