Abstract
BOLD fMRI is often used for the study of human language. However, there are still very few attempts to conduct longitudinal fMRI studies in the study of language acquisition by measuring auditory comprehension and reading. The following paper is the first in a series concerning a unique longitudinal study devoted to the analysis of bi- and multilingual subjects who are: (1) already proficient in at least two languages; or (2) are acquiring Russian as a second/third language. The focus of the current analysis is to present data from the auditory sections of a set of three scans acquired from April, 2011 through April, 2012 on a five-person subject pool who are learning Russian during the study. All subjects were scanned using the same protocol for auditory comprehension on the same General Electric LX 3T Signa scanner in Duke University Hospital. Using a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) for statistical analysis, proficiency measurements are shown to correlate significantly with scan results in the Russian conditions over time. The importance of both the left and right hemispheres in language processing is discussed. Special attention is devoted to the importance of contextualizing imaging data with corresponding behavioral and empirical testing data using a multivariate analysis of variance. This is the only study to date that includes: (1) longitudinal fMRI data with subject-based proficiency and behavioral data acquired in the same time frame; and (2) statistical modeling that demonstrates the importance of covariate language proficiency data for understanding imaging results of language acquisition.
Highlights
The question of how language or languages are represented in the human brain is one of the more challenging problems of contemporary neuroscience and neurolinguistics
While we share with many other studies a focus on normative language usage and acquisition, we have a research design that is theoretically informed and sensitive to important advancements in terms of the field of general linguistics, including cognitive and sociolinguistic paradigms, and that includes robust empirical data on subject language proficiency as a fundamental component of an attempt to provide a valid interpretation of scanning results
The regions of interest (ROI) that we focused on include the following: Left and right Medial Temporal Gyrus (MTG) BA l/r Superior Temporal Gyrus (STG) BA l/r Middle Frontal Gyrus (MFG) BA l/r Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG) BA 44, 45, l/r Postcentral Gyrus (PoG) BA 3, 1, 2 l/r Precentral Gyrus (PrG) BA four posteriorly, six anteriorly (For more information on the Pick atlas used by Wake Forest University, see [76,77].)
Summary
The question of how language or languages are represented in the human brain is one of the more challenging problems of contemporary neuroscience and neurolinguistics. Our working definition of human language focuses on language as a dynamic, hierarchical, and learned relatively-autonomous system of meaning-generating paradigmatic and syntagmatic signs that signify and communicate via speech communities and communities of practice to self and others throughout the life cycle Such a definition captures important principles of language as a cultural phenomenon, as well as a neurological one. It would be inappropriate to treat as comparable critical periods for visual cortical structures and acquisition of a first or second/third language These three important sets of questions serve as a central part of the theoretical orientation behind the construction of the experiments and protocols designed as part of our fMRI longitudinal study of second language acquisition and multilingualism ( LfMRI SLAM). These three important sets of questions serve as a central part of the theoretical orientation behind the construction of the experiments and protocols designed as part of our fMRI longitudinal study of second language acquisition and multilingualism ( LfMRI SLAM). (For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see [5].)
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