TY - JOUR
T1 - Anatomical connectivity changes in the bilingual brain
AU - García-Pentón, Lorna
AU - Pérez Fernández, Alejandro
AU - Iturria-Medina, Yasser
AU - Gillon-Dowens, Margaret
AU - Carreiras, Manuel
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Andrew Zalesky for providing the NBS programs used in this paper. We also are very grateful to Clara Martin and Jon Andoni Duñabeitia for their comments and revision of this manuscript. L.G-P. was supported by CONSOLIDER-INGENIO2010 CSD2008-00048 grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation . A.P. was supported by a Marie Curie ITN LCG grant PITN-GA-2009-237907 from the European Union . M.C. was partially supported by grants CONSOLIDER-INGENIO2010 CSD2008-00048 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and by ERC-2011-ADG-295362 grant from the European Research Council .
PY - 2014/1/1
Y1 - 2014/1/1
N2 - How the brain deals with more than one language and whether we need different or extra brain language sub-networks to support more than one language remain unanswered questions. Here, we investigate structural brain network differences between early bilinguals and monolinguals. Using diffusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI) tractography techniques and a network-based statistic (NBS) procedure, we found two structural sub-networks more connected by white matter (WM) tracts in bilinguals than in monolinguals; confirming WM brain plasticity in bilinguals. One of these sub-networks comprises left frontal and parietal/temporal regions, while the other comprises left occipital and parietal/temporal regions and also the right superior frontal gyrus. Most of these regions have been related to language processing and monitoring; suggesting that bilinguals develop specialized language sub-networks to deal with the two languages. Additionally, a complex network analysis showed that these sub-networks are more graph-efficient in bilinguals than monolinguals and this increase seems to be at the expense of a whole-network graph-efficiency decrease.
AB - How the brain deals with more than one language and whether we need different or extra brain language sub-networks to support more than one language remain unanswered questions. Here, we investigate structural brain network differences between early bilinguals and monolinguals. Using diffusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI) tractography techniques and a network-based statistic (NBS) procedure, we found two structural sub-networks more connected by white matter (WM) tracts in bilinguals than in monolinguals; confirming WM brain plasticity in bilinguals. One of these sub-networks comprises left frontal and parietal/temporal regions, while the other comprises left occipital and parietal/temporal regions and also the right superior frontal gyrus. Most of these regions have been related to language processing and monitoring; suggesting that bilinguals develop specialized language sub-networks to deal with the two languages. Additionally, a complex network analysis showed that these sub-networks are more graph-efficient in bilinguals than monolinguals and this increase seems to be at the expense of a whole-network graph-efficiency decrease.
KW - Bilingualism
KW - Efficiency
KW - Language
KW - Network
KW - Tractography
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84884734008&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.08.064
DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.08.064
M3 - Article
C2 - 24018306
AN - SCOPUS:84884734008
SN - 1053-8119
VL - 84
SP - 495
EP - 504
JO - NeuroImage
JF - NeuroImage
ER -