title: Anatomical connectivity changes in the bilingual brain.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), Mikeletegui 69, 2, 20009 Donostia-San Sebastian, Gipuzkoa, Spain. Electronic address: l.garcia@bcbl.eu.
authors.forename: Lorna
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: García-Pentón
authors.forename: Alejandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pérez Fernández
authors.forename: Yasser
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Iturria-Medina
authors.forename: Margaret
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gillon-Dowens
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Carreiras
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000502:physiology*; D063132:Connectome / Q000379:methods*; D056324:Diffusion Tensor Imaging / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000502:physiology*; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity / Q000502:physiology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013030:Spain; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Bilingualism; Efficiency; Language; Network; Tractography