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Language Experience Impacts Brain Activation for Spoken and Signed Language in Infancy: Insights From Unimodal and Bimodal Bilinguals

Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that monolingual infants activate a left-lateralized frontotemporal brain network in response to spoken language, which is similar to the network involved in processing spoken and signed language in adulthood. However, it is unclear how brain activation to languag...

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Autores principales: Mercure, Evelyne, Evans, Samuel, Pirazzoli, Laura, Goldberg, Laura, Bowden-Howl, Harriet, Coulson-Thaker, Kimberley, Beedie, Indie, Lloyd-Fox, Sarah, Johnson, Mark H., MacSweeney, Mairéad
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MIT Press 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7145445/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32274469
http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/nol_a_00001
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author Mercure, Evelyne
Evans, Samuel
Pirazzoli, Laura
Goldberg, Laura
Bowden-Howl, Harriet
Coulson-Thaker, Kimberley
Beedie, Indie
Lloyd-Fox, Sarah
Johnson, Mark H.
MacSweeney, Mairéad
author_facet Mercure, Evelyne
Evans, Samuel
Pirazzoli, Laura
Goldberg, Laura
Bowden-Howl, Harriet
Coulson-Thaker, Kimberley
Beedie, Indie
Lloyd-Fox, Sarah
Johnson, Mark H.
MacSweeney, Mairéad
author_sort Mercure, Evelyne
collection PubMed
description Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that monolingual infants activate a left-lateralized frontotemporal brain network in response to spoken language, which is similar to the network involved in processing spoken and signed language in adulthood. However, it is unclear how brain activation to language is influenced by early experience in infancy. To address this question, we present functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) data from 60 hearing infants (4 to 8 months of age): 19 monolingual infants exposed to English, 20 unimodal bilingual infants exposed to two spoken languages, and 21 bimodal bilingual infants exposed to English and British Sign Language (BSL). Across all infants, spoken language elicited activation in a bilateral brain network including the inferior frontal and posterior temporal areas, whereas sign language elicited activation in the right temporoparietal area. A significant difference in brain lateralization was observed between groups. Activation in the posterior temporal region was not lateralized in monolinguals and bimodal bilinguals, but right lateralized in response to both language modalities in unimodal bilinguals. This suggests that the experience of two spoken languages influences brain activation for sign language when experienced for the first time. Multivariate pattern analyses (MVPAs) could classify distributed patterns of activation within the left hemisphere for spoken and signed language in monolinguals (proportion correct = 0.68; p = 0.039) but not in unimodal or bimodal bilinguals. These results suggest that bilingual experience in infancy influences brain activation for language and that unimodal bilingual experience has greater impact on early brain lateralization than bimodal bilingual experience.
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spelling pubmed-71454452020-04-09 Language Experience Impacts Brain Activation for Spoken and Signed Language in Infancy: Insights From Unimodal and Bimodal Bilinguals Mercure, Evelyne Evans, Samuel Pirazzoli, Laura Goldberg, Laura Bowden-Howl, Harriet Coulson-Thaker, Kimberley Beedie, Indie Lloyd-Fox, Sarah Johnson, Mark H. MacSweeney, Mairéad Neurobiol Lang (Camb) Research Articles Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that monolingual infants activate a left-lateralized frontotemporal brain network in response to spoken language, which is similar to the network involved in processing spoken and signed language in adulthood. However, it is unclear how brain activation to language is influenced by early experience in infancy. To address this question, we present functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) data from 60 hearing infants (4 to 8 months of age): 19 monolingual infants exposed to English, 20 unimodal bilingual infants exposed to two spoken languages, and 21 bimodal bilingual infants exposed to English and British Sign Language (BSL). Across all infants, spoken language elicited activation in a bilateral brain network including the inferior frontal and posterior temporal areas, whereas sign language elicited activation in the right temporoparietal area. A significant difference in brain lateralization was observed between groups. Activation in the posterior temporal region was not lateralized in monolinguals and bimodal bilinguals, but right lateralized in response to both language modalities in unimodal bilinguals. This suggests that the experience of two spoken languages influences brain activation for sign language when experienced for the first time. Multivariate pattern analyses (MVPAs) could classify distributed patterns of activation within the left hemisphere for spoken and signed language in monolinguals (proportion correct = 0.68; p = 0.039) but not in unimodal or bimodal bilinguals. These results suggest that bilingual experience in infancy influences brain activation for language and that unimodal bilingual experience has greater impact on early brain lateralization than bimodal bilingual experience. MIT Press 2020-03-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7145445/ /pubmed/32274469 http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/nol_a_00001 Text en © 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For a full description of the license, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Research Articles
Mercure, Evelyne
Evans, Samuel
Pirazzoli, Laura
Goldberg, Laura
Bowden-Howl, Harriet
Coulson-Thaker, Kimberley
Beedie, Indie
Lloyd-Fox, Sarah
Johnson, Mark H.
MacSweeney, Mairéad
Language Experience Impacts Brain Activation for Spoken and Signed Language in Infancy: Insights From Unimodal and Bimodal Bilinguals
title Language Experience Impacts Brain Activation for Spoken and Signed Language in Infancy: Insights From Unimodal and Bimodal Bilinguals
title_full Language Experience Impacts Brain Activation for Spoken and Signed Language in Infancy: Insights From Unimodal and Bimodal Bilinguals
title_fullStr Language Experience Impacts Brain Activation for Spoken and Signed Language in Infancy: Insights From Unimodal and Bimodal Bilinguals
title_full_unstemmed Language Experience Impacts Brain Activation for Spoken and Signed Language in Infancy: Insights From Unimodal and Bimodal Bilinguals
title_short Language Experience Impacts Brain Activation for Spoken and Signed Language in Infancy: Insights From Unimodal and Bimodal Bilinguals
title_sort language experience impacts brain activation for spoken and signed language in infancy: insights from unimodal and bimodal bilinguals
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7145445/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32274469
http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/nol_a_00001
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