Contrasting Effects of Vocabulary Knowledge on Temporal and Parietal Brain Structure across Lifespan

Using behavioral, structural, and functional imaging techniques, we demonstrate contrasting effects of vocabulary knowledge on temporal and parietal brain structure in 47 healthy volunteers who ranged in age from 7 to 73 years. In the left posterior supramarginal gyrus, vocabulary knowledge was posi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of cognitive neuroscience Vol. 22; no. 5; pp. 943 - 954
Main Authors Richardson, Fiona M., Thomas, Michael S. C., Filippi, Roberto, Harth, Helen, Price, Cathy J.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published One Rogers Street, Cambridge, MA 02142-1209, USA MIT Press 01.05.2010
Subjects
Adolescent
Adolescents
Adult
Adults
Age Differences
Age Factors
Aged
Brain
Brain Mapping
Child
Children
Comparative Analysis
Correlation
Female
Functional Laterality - physiology
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Language Acquisition
Language Development
Language Processing
Learning Strategies
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Male
Memory - physiology
Middle Aged
Neuropsychological Tests
Oxygen - blood
Parietal Lobe - physiology
Parietal Lobe - physiopathology
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Photic Stimulation - methods
Psychometrics - methods
Reaction Time
Science Education
Semantics
Sentences
Temporal Lobe - blood supply
Temporal Lobe - physiology
Vocabulary
Vocabulary Development
Vocabulary Skills
Young Adult
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Summary:Using behavioral, structural, and functional imaging techniques, we demonstrate contrasting effects of vocabulary knowledge on temporal and parietal brain structure in 47 healthy volunteers who ranged in age from 7 to 73 years. In the left posterior supramarginal gyrus, vocabulary knowledge was positively correlated with gray matter density in teenagers but not adults. This region was not activated during auditory or visual sentence processing, and activation was unrelated to vocabulary skills. Its gray matter density may reflect the use of an explicit learning strategy that links new words to lexical or conceptual equivalents, as used in formal education and second language acquisition. By contrast, in left posterior temporal regions, gray matter as well as auditory and visual sentence activation correlated with vocabulary knowledge throughout lifespan. We propose that these effects reflect the acquisition of vocabulary through context, when new words are learnt within the context of semantically and syntactically related words.
Bibliography:May, 2010
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ISSN:0898-929X
1530-8898
1530-8898
DOI:10.1162/jocn.2009.21238