The neuroprotective effects of bilingualism upon the inferior parietal lobule: A Structural Neuroimaging Study in Aging Chinese Bilinguals
By Jubin Abutalebi, Matteo Canini, P. D. Rosa, David W. Green, Brendan S. Weekes. 2015
176 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract It is a timely issue to understand the impact of bilingualism upon brain structure in healthy aging and upon cognitive decline given evidence of its neuroprotective effects. Plastic changes induced by bilingualism were reported in young adults in the left inferior parietal lobule (LIPL) and its right counterpart (RIPL) (Mechelli et al., 2004). Moreover, both age of second language (L2) acquisition and L2 proficiency correlated with increased grey matter (GM) in the LIPL/RIPL. However it is unknown whether such findings replicate in older bilinguals. We examined this question in an aging bilingual population from Hong Kong. Results from our Voxel Based Morphometry study show that elderly bilinguals relative to a matched monolingual control group also have increased GM volumes in the inferior parietal lobules underlining the neuroprotective effect of bilingualism. However, unlike younger adults, age of L2 acquisition did not predict GM volumes. Instead, LIPL and RIPL appear differentially sensitive to the effects of L2 proficiency and L2 exposure with LIPL more sensitive to the former and RIPL more sensitive to the latter. Our data also intimate that such differences may be more prominent for speakers of languages that are linguistically closer such as in Cantonese-Mandarin bilinguals as compared to Cantonese-English bilinguals.
Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ce29746f7259c628d0167f079fcb665112bebb8e
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
- Ellen Bialystok
- David W. Green
- Jubin Abutalebi
- Debra Titone
- Virginia Valian
- G. Luk
- Judith F. Kroll
- Matthew D. Hilchey
In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Citations in the corpus
- The Lifespan Human Connectome Project in Aging: An overview (2018, unknown): “, 2015) and grey matter density (Abutalebi et al., 2015; Abutalebi et al., 2014; Mechelli et al., 2004) in frontal, temporal and parietal structures, which could potentially underlie the bilingual advantages seen in executive functioning (i.”
- Neuroimaging of language control in bilinguals: neural adaptation and reserve (2016, background): “Related to the findings of Luk et al. (2011) is the recent evidence that aging bilinguals compared to matched monolinguals have increased grey matter along the entire extension of the ACC, starting from its dorsal region and extending towards its ventral region (Abutalebi et al., 2015a).”
- The Bilingual Adaptation: How Minds Accommodate Experience (2017, background): “, Abutalebi et al., 2012; Gold et al., 2013a), something not possible if both brain function and behavioral performance are different. Notably, recent research in cognitive neuroscience takes place in the absence of behavioral data, investigating for example the relation between resting state connec”