Neural basis of language switching in the brain: fMRI evidence from Korean–Chinese early bilinguals

• Published in: Brain and language Vol. 138; pp. 12 - 18
• Main Authors: Lei, Miaomei, Akama, Hiroyuki, Murphy, Brian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier Inc 01.11.2014; Elsevier
• Subjects: Adult; Anatomical correlates of behavior; Behavioral psychophysiology; Bilingualism; Bilingualism. Multilingualism; Biological and medical sciences; Brain - physiology; Brain Mapping; Cognitive model; Female; fMRI; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; GLM; Humans; Language; Language switching; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Multilingualism; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Univariate Searchlight; Young Adult; fMRI; GLM; Language switching; Bilingualism; Cognitive model; Univariate Searchlight; Human; Central nervous system; Korean; Cognition; Experimental study; Encephalon; fM RI; Cognitive theory; Theoretical model; Language; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Chinese; Early
• ISSN: 0093-934X; 1090-2155
• DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2014.08.009

•A bilingual fMRI study on early bilinguals of Korean and Chinese.•An original experimental design with simultaneous translation for language switching.•Combined usage of GLM and MVPA (Searchlight) applied to the identical fMRI datasets.•Increased activation and modelling accuracy for language switching in distributed regions of interest.•The result supports the new ‘hodological’ cognitive model of language switching. Using fMRI, we conducted two types of property generation task that involved language switching, with early bilingual speakers of Korean and Chinese. The first is a more conventional task in which a single language (L1 or L2) was used within each trial, but switched randomly from trial to trial. The other consists of a novel experimental design where language switching happens within each trial, alternating in the direction of the L1/L2 translation required. Our findings support a recently introduced cognitive model, the ‘hodological’ view of language switching proposed by Moritz-Gasser and Duffau. The nodes of a distributed neural network that this model proposes are consistent with the informative regions that we extracted in this study, using both GLM methods and Multivariate Pattern Analyses: the supplementary motor area, caudate, supramarginal gyrus and fusiform gyrus and other cortical areas.