Dual Function of Primary Somatosensory Cortex in Cognitive Control of Language: Evidence from Resting State fMRI

Abstract

Resting state functional connectivity can be leveraged to investigate bilingual individual differences in cognitive control of language; however, thus far no report is provided on how the connectivity profiles of brain functional networks at rest point to different language control behavior in bilinguals. In order to address this gap in state-of-the-art research we did a functional connectivity analysis on the resting state data acquired via multiband EPI to investigate three resting state networks of interest namely, the frontoparietal network (FPN), the salience network (SN), and the default mode network (DMN), which are related to cognitive control, between two groups of Dutch–English bilinguals based on how they performed in a language switching task. Results demonstrated that there is the increased coupling of the left primary somatosensory cortex with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the group with better performance in cognitive control of language and the increased coupling of the right primary somatosensory cortex with the inferior parietal cortex in the group with poorer performance in this executive function. As regards these results, we claim that the primary somatosensory cortex has a dual function in coupling with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the inferior parietal cortex in the FPN, and in fact, in what characterizes bilingual individual differences in cognitive control of language in healthy participants. The results of this study provide a model for future research in cognitive control of language and may serve as a reference in clinical neuroscience when bilinguals are diagnosed with dysfunction in cognitive control.