Journal
NEUROIMAGE
Volume 84, Issue -, Pages 495-504Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.08.064
Keywords
Bilingualism; Efficiency; Language; Network; Tractography
Funding
- Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [CONSOLIDER-INGENIO2010 CSD2008-00048]
- European Union [PITN-GA-2009-237907]
- European Research Council [ERC-2011-ADG-295362]
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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. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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