Language-invariant verb processing regions in Spanish-English bilinguals.
Neuroimage
; 57(1): 251-261, 2011 Jul 01.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-21515387
ABSTRACT
Nouns and verbs are fundamental grammatical building blocks of all languages. Studies of brain-damaged patients and healthy individuals have demonstrated that verb processing can be dissociated from noun processing at a neuroanatomical level. In cases where bilingual patients have a noun or verb deficit, the deficit has been observed in both languages. This suggests that the noun-verb distinction may be based on neural components that are common across languages. Here we investigated the cortical organization of grammatical categories in healthy, early Spanish-English bilinguals using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a morphophonological alternation task. Four regions showed greater activity for verbs than for nouns in both languages left posterior middle temporal gyrus (LMTG), left middle frontal gyrus (LMFG), pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA), and right middle occipital gyrus (RMOG); no regions showed greater activation for nouns. Multi-voxel pattern analysis within verb-specific regions showed indistinguishable activity patterns for English and Spanish, indicating language-invariant bilingual processing. In LMTG and LMFG, patterns were more similar within than across grammatical category, both within and across languages, indicating language-invariant grammatical class information. These results suggest that the neural substrates underlying verb-specific processing are largely independent of language in bilinguals, both at the macroscopic neuroanatomical level and at the level of voxel activity patterns.
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Percepção da Fala
/
Mapeamento Encefálico
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Multilinguismo
Limite:
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Neuroimage
Assunto da revista:
DIAGNOSTICO POR IMAGEM
Ano de publicação:
2011
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Estados Unidos