Linguistic immersion and structural effects on the bilingual brain: a longitudinal study

Learning and using additional languages can result in structural changes in the brain. However, the time course of these changes, as well as the factors the predict them, are still not well understood. In this longitudinal study we test the effects of bilingual immersion on brain structure of adult sequential bilinguals not undergoing any language training, who were scanned twice, three years apart. We observed significant increases in grey matter volume in the lower left cerebellum, mean white matter diffusivity in the frontal cortex, and reshaping of the left caudate nucleus and amygdala and bilateral hippocampus. Moreover, both prior length of immersion and L2 age of acquisition were significant predictors of volumetric change in the cerebellum. Taken together, these results indicate that bilingualism-induced neurological changes continue to take place across the lifespan and are strongly related to the quantity and quality of bilingual immersion, even in highly-immersed adult bilingual populations.

[1]  Lee Osterhout,et al.  Second-language learning and changes in the brain , 2008, Journal of Neurolinguistics.

[2]  Richard S. J. Frackowiak,et al.  Neurolinguistics: Structural plasticity in the bilingual brain , 2004, Nature.

[3]  Michael J. Spivey,et al.  Competing activation in bilingual language processing: Within- and between-language competition , 2003, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.

[4]  J. Kroll,et al.  Language experience and the brain: variability, neuroplasticity, and bilingualism , 2016 .

[5]  C. Pliatsikas,et al.  The effects of bilingualism on the white matter structure of the brain , 2015, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[6]  John H. Schumann,et al.  Appraisal psychology, neurobiology, and language , 2001, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics.

[7]  G. Gong,et al.  How bilingualism protects the brain from aging: Insights from bimodal bilinguals , 2017, Human brain mapping.

[8]  M. Mallar Chakravarty,et al.  The effect of lifelong bilingualism on regional grey and white matter volume , 2015, Brain Research.

[9]  Naama Friedmann,et al.  Rapid language-related plasticity: microstructural changes in the cortex after a short session of new word learning , 2017, Brain Structure and Function.

[10]  D. Green.  Language Control in Different Contexts: The Behavioral Ecology of Bilingual Speakers , 2011, Front. Psychology.

[11]  Aurora I. Ramos-Nuñez,et al.  Bilingualism influences structural indices of interhemispheric organization , 2017, Journal of Neurolinguistics.

[12]  Jonathan A. Berken,et al.  The timing of language learning shapes brain structure associated with articulation , 2015, Brain Structure and Function.

[13]  Michael H. Long.  Problems in SLA , 2007 .

[14]  Michael J. Spivey,et al.  Cross Talk Between Native and Second Languages: Partial Activation of an Irrelevant Lexicon , 1999 .

[15]  Lutz Jäncke,et al.  Processing demands upon cognitive, linguistic, and articulatory functions promote grey matter plasticity in the adult multilingual brain: Insights from simultaneous interpreters , 2014, Cortex.

[16]  Stephen M. Smith,et al.  Permutation inference for the general linear model , 2014, NeuroImage.

[17]  D. Green,et al.  Neuroimaging of language control in bilinguals: neural adaptation and reserve , 2016 .

[18]  Noelia Ventura-Campos,et al.  Bilingualism at the core of the brain. Structural differences between bilinguals and monolinguals revealed by subcortical shape analysis , 2016, NeuroImage.

[19]  C. Pliatsikas,et al.  Converging diversity to unity: commentary on The neuroanatomy of bilingualism , 2016 .

[20]  Martin Bellander,et al.  Behavioral correlates of changes in hippocampal gray matter structure during acquisition of foreign vocabulary , 2016, NeuroImage.

[21]  J. D. Saddy,et al.  Immersive bilingualism reshapes the core of the brain , 2016, Brain Structure and Function.

[22]  Stephen M. Smith,et al.  Threshold-free cluster enhancement: Addressing problems of smoothing, threshold dependence and localisation in cluster inference , 2009, NeuroImage.

[23]  C. F. Beckmann,et al.  Tensorial extensions of independent component analysis for multisubject FMRI analysis , 2005, NeuroImage.

[24]  Andrea Stocco,et al.  Bilingual brain training: A neurobiological framework of how bilingual experience improves executive function , 2012, International Journal of Bilingualism.

[25]  D. Green,et al.  The neuroprotective effects of bilingualism upon the inferior parietal lobule: A Structural Neuroimaging Study in Aging Chinese Bilinguals , 2015, Journal of Neurolinguistics.

[26]  B. Gold,et al.  Lifelong bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve against white matter integrity declines in aging , 2013, Neuropsychologia.

[27]  E. Luders,et al.  Voxel-Based Morphometry , 2015 .

[28]  Albert Costa,et al.  The role of the left putamen in multilingual language production , 2013, Brain and Language.

[29]  M. Ullman.  Contributions of memory circuits to language: the declarative/procedural model , 2004, Cognition.

[30]  John Ashburner,et al.  Structural plasticity in the bilingual brain: Proficiency in a second language and age at acquisition affect grey-matter density. , 2004 .

[31]  Porter E. Coggins,et al.  Bilingual corpus callosum variability , 2004, Brain and Language.

[32]  T. Johnstone,et al.  Grey Matter Volume in the Cerebellum is Related to the Processing of Grammatical Rules in a Second Language: A Structural Voxel-based Morphometry Study , 2013, The Cerebellum.

[33]  Jacqueline Cummine,et al.  Understanding white matter integrity stability for bilinguals on language status and reading performance , 2012, Brain Structure and Function.

[34]  Takashi Hanakawa,et al.  Dynamic Neural Network Reorganization Associated with Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition: A Multimodal Imaging Study , 2013, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[35]  B. O'Brien,et al.  Neurolinguistics: Structure, Function, and Connectivity in the Bilingual Brain , 2016, BioMed research international.

[36]  E. Bialystok.  The signal and the noise: Finding the pattern in human behavior , 2016 .

[37]  C. Pliatsikas.  Multilingualism and Brain Plasticity , 2019, The Handbook of the Neuroscience of Multilingualism.

[38]  Maria Stein,et al.  Structural plasticity in the language system related to increased second language proficiency , 2012, Cortex.

[39]  D. Llano.  Functional imaging of the thalamus in language , 2013, Brain and Language.

[40]  T. Dierks,et al.  Structural brain changes related to bilingualism: does immersion make a difference? , 2014, Front. Psychol..

[41]  Magnus Lindgren,et al.  Growth of language-related brain areas after foreign language learning , 2012, NeuroImage.

[42]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Voxel-Based Morphometry—The Methods , 2000, NeuroImage.

[43]  Denise Klein,et al.  Effects of Early and Late Bilingualism on Resting-State Functional Connectivity , 2016, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[44]  J. Houk,et al.  The Role of the Basal Ganglia and Cerebellum in Language Processing , 2006 .

[45]  M. Carreiras,et al.  The neuroanatomy of bilingualism: how to turn a hazy view into the full picture , 2016 .

[46]  T. Johnstone,et al.  fMRI Evidence for the Involvement of the Procedural Memory System in Morphological Processing of a Second Language , 2014, PloS one.

[47]  R. Luypaert,et al.  DTI reveals structural differences in white matter tracts between bilingual and monolingual children , 2012, Brain Research.

[48]  G. Thierry,et al.  Brain potentials reveal unconscious translation during foreign-language comprehension , 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[49]  Ninon Burgos,et al.  New advances in the Clinica software platform for clinical neuroimaging studies , 2019 .

[50]  S. Sala,et al.  The Handbook of the Neuroscience of Multilingualism , 2017 .

[51]  Vincent L. Gracco,et al.  Early bilingualism, language attainment, and brain development , 2017, Neuropsychologia.

[52]  E. Bialystok,et al.  Bilingualism is not a categorical variable: Interaction between language proficiency and usage , 2013, Journal of cognitive psychology.

[53]  Kate E. Watkins,et al.  Age of language learning shapes brain structure: A cortical thickness study of bilingual and monolingual individuals , 2014, Brain and Language.

[54]  Patricia K Kuhl,et al.  Brain white matter structure and COMT gene are linked to second-language learning in adults , 2016, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[55]  Mark W. Woolrich,et al.  FSL , 2012, NeuroImage.

[56]  F. Craik,et al.  Lifelong Bilingualism Maintains White Matter Integrity in Older Adults , 2011, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[57]  Patricia K. Kuhl,et al.  Neuroimaging of the bilingual brain: Structural brain correlates of listening and speaking in a second language , 2016, Brain and Language.

[58]  Michael S. C. Thomas,et al.  The Right Posterior Paravermis and the Control of Language Interference , 2011, Journal of Neuroscience.

[59]  E. Bialystok.  The bilingual adaptation: How minds accommodate experience. , 2017, Psychological bulletin.

[60]  Andrea Stocco,et al.  Bilingualism trains specific brain circuits involved in flexible rule selection and application , 2014, Brain and Language.

[61]  Cheryl Frenck-Mestre,et al.  Articulation in early and late bilinguals' two languages: evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging , 2005, Neuroreport.

[62]  D. Green,et al.  Language control in bilinguals: The adaptive control hypothesis , 2013, Journal of cognitive psychology.

[63]  Cathy J. Price,et al.  Structural Correlates of Semantic and Phonemic Fluency Ability in First and Second Languages , 2009, Cerebral cortex.

[64]  Timothy Edward John Behrens,et al.  Characterization and propagation of uncertainty in diffusion‐weighted MR imaging , 2003, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[65]  Daniel Rueckert,et al.  Tract-based spatial statistics: Voxelwise analysis of multi-subject diffusion data , 2006, NeuroImage.

[66]  周彬彬,et al.  Interlanguage : forty years later , 2014 .

[67]  Yves Rosseel,et al.  White-Matter Development is Different in Bilingual and Monolingual Children: A Longitudinal DTI Study , 2015, PloS one.

[68]  Jason Rothman,et al.  Why All Counter-Evidence to the Critical Period Hypothesis in Second Language Acquisition Is not Equal or Problematic , 2008, Lang. Linguistics Compass.

[69]  C. Pliatsikas,et al.  Editorial: Learning a non-native language in a naturalistic environment: insights from behavioral and neuroimaging research , 2015, Front. Psychol..

[70]  Emily S. Nichols,et al.  Functional activity and white matter microstructure reveal the independent effects of age of acquisition and proficiency on second-language learning , 2016, NeuroImage.

[71]  T. Bak.  Cooking pasta in La Paz: Bilingualism, bias and the replication crisis , 2016 .

[72]  Ellen Bialystok,et al.  Neural correlates of cognitive processing in monolinguals and bilinguals , 2017, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[73]  Michele T. Diaz,et al.  Changes in White-Matter Connectivity in Late Second Language Learners: Evidence from Diffusion Tensor Imaging , 2017, Front. Psychol..

[74]  Jubin Abutalebi,et al.  Cognitive control for language switching in bilinguals: A quantitative meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies , 2012, Language and cognitive processes.

[75]  N. Filippini,et al.  Group comparison of resting-state FMRI data using multi-subject ICA and dual regression , 2009, NeuroImage.

[76]  E. Benarroch.  Executive Control , 2022, Neuroscience for Clinicians.

[77]  X. Chai,et al.  Simultaneous learning of two languages from birth positively impacts intrinsic functional connectivity and cognitive control , 2017, Brain and Cognition.

[78]  Christos Pliatsikas,et al.  Executive control in bilinguals: A concise review on fMRI studies. , 2016 .

[79]  Stephen M. Smith,et al.  A Bayesian model of shape and appearance for subcortical brain segmentation , 2011, NeuroImage.

[80]  Stephen M. Smith,et al.  Probabilistic independent component analysis for functional magnetic resonance imaging , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.