Common and Segregated Neuronal Networks for Different Languages Revealed Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Adaptation

The effect of word repetition within and across languages was studied in English-Chinese bilinguals who read rapidly presented word pairs in a block design and an event-related fMRI study. Relatively less increase in MR signal was observed when the second word in a pair was identical in meaning to t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of cognitive neuroscience 2003-01, Vol.15 (1), p.85-97
Main Authors: Chee, Michael W. L., Soon, Chun Siong, Lee, Hwee Ling
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation, Psychological - physiology
Adult
Anatomical correlates of behavior
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Brain Mapping
Discrimination (Psychology)
Evoked Potentials - physiology
Female
Functional Laterality
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Languages
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Male
Multilingualism
Nerve Net - physiology
Neural networks
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Paired-Associate Learning
Photic Stimulation
Prefrontal Cortex - anatomy & histology
Prefrontal Cortex - physiology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction Time
Semantics
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Summary:The effect of word repetition within and across languages was studied in English-Chinese bilinguals who read rapidly presented word pairs in a block design and an event-related fMRI study. Relatively less increase in MR signal was observed when the second word in a pair was identical in meaning to the first. This occurred in the English-only and mixed-languages conditions. Repetition-induced reductions in BOLD signal change were found in the left lateral prefrontal and lateral temporal regions in both types of conditions in the block experiment, suggesting that processing in these regions is sensitive to semantic features present in words and characters, and that part of the semantic neuronal networks serving English and Chinese is shared. In addition, these regions showed greater absolute signal change in the mixed-languages trials relative to the English-only trials. These findings were mostly replicated in an event-related experiment. Together, the experiments suggest that while the networks for Chinese and English word processing have shared components, there are also components that may be language specific.
ISSN:0898-929X
1530-8898
DOI:10.1162/089892903321107846