Neurolinguistics: Structural plasticity in the bilingual brain

By Andrea Mechelli, Jennifer T. Crinion, Uta Noppeney, John P. O'Doherty, John Ashburner, Richard S. J. Frackowiak, Cathy J. Price. Nature, 2004

927 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental and Educational Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/95ac715f6d1d187f43bd96ae834d0b47cbfc54fa

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Bilingualism: Consequences for Mind and Brain (2012, neutral): “Mechelli and colleagues [111] reported higher grey matter density in left inferior parietal regions in a group of Italian-English bilinguals relative to English monolinguals.”
The neuroprotective effects of bilingualism upon the inferior parietal lobule: A Structural Neuroimaging Study in Aging Chinese Bilinguals (2015, neutral): “One of the brain areas prone to neuroplastic changes induced by bilingualism, and key to our investigation, is the left inferior parietal lobule and its right counterpart (Mechelli et al., 2004).”
Is there a relation between onset age of bilingualism and enhancement of cognitive control?* (2011, background): “Mechelli et al. (2004) found that increased grey matter density in the left inferior parietal area was positively related to bilinguals’ L2 proficiency and negatively related to age of L2 acquisition.”
Moving toward a neuroplasticity view of bilingualism, executive control, and aging (2014, background): “, 2000), and acquisition of a second language (Berken et al., 2012; Klein et al., 2012; Mechelli et al., 2004).”
The developing brain and neural plasticity: Implications for normality, psychopathology, and resilience. (2015, background): “For example, a recent structural MRI study showed that learning a second language increased the density of grey matter in the left inferior parietal cortex, with the degree of increase modulated by not only the degree of proficiency attained in the language, but also the age of acquisition (Mechelli”
Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density (2010, background): “Cross-sectional studies have established that differences in regional gray matter are associated with performance abilities (Mechelli et al., 2004; Milad et al., 2005), suggesting that an increase in gray matter corresponds to improved functioning in the relevant area.”
The Advantages of Bilingualism Debate (2019, background): “…various abilities and skills) than monolinguals in several brain structures, including the left inferior parietal lobule (and this is modulated by age of acquisition and proficiency; Mechelli et al. 2004), as well as the caudate nucleus (Zou et al. 2012) and the cerebellum (Pliatsikas et al. 2014).”
Bilingualism: The good, the bad, and the indifferent* (2009, background): “ca early bilinguals and those with greater proficiency in the second language (Mechelli et al., 2004).”
The Bilingual Adaptation: How Minds Accommodate Experience (2017, background): “…density in the left inferior parietal region, a primary center for language processing, was positively correlated to the participant’s degree of bilingualism (Mechelli et al., 2004) and increased with the time spent in a 5-month foreign language class in a longitudinal study (Stein et al., 2012).”
Control mechanisms in bilingual language production: Neural evidence from language switching studies (2008, background): “Voxel-based morphometry shows that bilinguals compared with monolinguals have increased grey-matter density in one region of parietal cortex, the posterior supramarginal gyrus (Mechelli, Crinion, Noppeney, O'Doherty, Ashburner, Frackowiak, & Price, 2004 ; see Green, Crinion & Price, 2007 for an e”
The neuroanatomy of general intelligence: sex matters (2005, background): “…et al., 2002; Thompson et al., 2001), there is evidence that GM volume in humans can increase with motor learning (Draganski et al., 2004) or the acquisition of a second language (Mechelli et al., 2004) and the nature of genetic determinism in general is now controversial (Silverman, 2004).”
Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness (2005, result): “These findings are consistent with other cross-sectional reports of experience-dependent differences in neural volume [16,17].”
Neuroimaging of language control in bilinguals: neural adaptation and reserve (2016, background): “As discussed above, Mechelli et al. (2004) found increased grey matter density in LIPL that correlated with L2 vocabulary knowledge.”
A Meta‐analysis of Hemodynamic Studies on First and Second Language Processing: Which Suggested Differences Can We Trust and What Do They Mean? (2006, background): “Anatomical differences between monolingual and bilingual speakers have recently been reported in an inferior parietal region (Mechelli et al., 2004) and in an anterior portion of the mid-body of the corpus callosum (Coggins, Kennedy, & Armstrong, 2004).”