title: Greater leftward lateralization of the inferior frontal gyrus in second language learners with higher syntactic abilities.
abstract: There is a great individual variability for acquiring syntactic knowledge in a second language (L2). Little is, however, known if there is any anatomical basis in the brain for individual differences in syntactic acquisition. Here we examined brain structures in 95 nonnative speakers of English, including 78 high-school students and 17 adult international students. We found a significant correlation between the performance of a syntactic task and leftward lateralization of a single region in the triangular part (F3t) of the inferior frontal gyrus, which has been proposed as the grammar center. Moreover, this correlation was independent of the performance of a spelling task, age, gender, and handedness. This striking result suggests that the neural basis for syntactic abilities in L2 is independent of that for lexical knowledge in L2, further indicating that the individual differences in syntactic acquisition are related to the lateralization of the grammar center.
authors.affiliation: Department of Basic Science, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Komaba, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Arihito
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nauchi
authors.forename: Kuniyoshi L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Sakai
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D007804:Language Development; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen