Parenting Influences on Frontal Lobe Gray Matter and Preterm Toddlers' Problem-Solving Skills.

Children born preterm often face challenges with self-regulation during toddlerhood. This study examined the relationship between prematurity, supportive parent behaviors, frontal lobe gray matter volume (GMV), and emotion regulation (ER) among toddlers during a parent-assisted, increasingly complex problem-solving task, validated for this age range. Data were collected from preterm toddlers (n = 57) ages 15-30 months corrected for prematurity and their primary caregivers. MRI data were collected during toddlers' natural sleep. The sample contained three gestational groups: 22-27 weeks (extremely preterm; EPT), 28-33 weeks (very preterm; VPT), and 34-36 weeks (late preterm; LPT). Older toddlers became more compliant as the Tool Task increased in difficulty, but this pattern varied by gestational group. Engagement was highest for LPT toddlers, for older toddlers, and for the easiest task condition. Parents did not differentiate their support depending on task difficulty or their child's age or gestational group. Older children had greater frontal lobe GMV, and for EPT toddlers only, more parent support was related to larger right frontal lobe GMV. We found that parent support had the greatest impact on high birth risk (≤27 gestational weeks) toddler brain development, thus early parent interventions may normalize preterm child neurodevelopment and have lasting impacts.

Large-scale investigation of white matter structural differences in bilingual and monolingual children: An adolescent brain cognitive development data study.

Emerging research has provided valuable insights into the structural characteristics of the bilingual brain from studies of bilingual adults; however, there is a dearth of evidence examining brain structural alterations in childhood associated with the bilingual experience. This study examined the associations between bilingualism and white matter organization in bilingual children compared to monolingual peers leveraging the large-scale data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. Then, 446 bilingual children (ages 9-10) were identified from the participants in the ABCD data and rigorously matched to a group of 446 monolingual peers. Multiple regression models for selected language and cognitive control white matter pathways were used to compare white matter fractional anisotropy (FA) values between bilinguals and monolinguals, controlling for demographic and environmental factors as covariates in the models. Results revealed significantly lower FA values in bilinguals compared to monolinguals across established dorsal and ventral language network pathways bilaterally (i.e., the superior longitudinal fasciculus and inferior frontal-occipital fasciculus) and right-hemispheric pathways in areas related to cognitive control and short-term memory (i.e., cingulum and parahippocampal cingulum). In contrast to the enhanced FA values observed in adult bilinguals relative to monolinguals, our findings of lower FA in bilingual children relative to monolinguals may suggest a protracted development of white matter pathways associated with language and cognitive control resulting from dual language learning in childhood. Further, these findings underscore the need for large-scale longitudinal investigation of white matter development in bilingual children to understand neuroplasticity associated with the bilingual experience during this period of heightened language learning.

Subcortical and cerebellar volume differences in bilingual and monolingual children: An ABCD study.

Research suggests that bilingual children experience an extension or delay in the closing of the sensitive/critical period of language development due to multiple language exposure. Moreover, bilingual experience may impact the development of subcortical regions, although these conclusions are drawn from research with adults, as there is a scarcity of research during late childhood and early adolescence. The current study included 1215 bilingual and 5894 monolingual children from the ABCD Study to examine the relationship between subcortical volume and English vocabulary in heritage Spanish bilingual and English monolingual children, as well as volumetric differences between the language groups. We also examined the unique effects of language usage in bilingual children's subcortical volumes. In general, bilingual children had less cerebellar volume and greater volume in the putamen, thalamus, and globus pallidus than monolingual children. English vocabulary was positively related to volume in the cerebellum, thalamus, caudate, putamen, nucleus accumbens, and right pallidum in all children. Moreover, the positive relationship between vocabulary and volume in the nucleus accumbens was stronger for monolingual adolescents than bilingual adolescents. The results are somewhat in line with existing literature on the dynamic volume adaptation of subcortical brain regions due to bilingual development and experience. Future research is needed to further explore these regions longitudinally across development to examine structural changes in bilingual brains.

Cortical Thickness Is Related to Variability in Heritage Bilingual Language Proficiency.

Research suggests that bilingual experience is associated with gray matter changes, such that initial language gains are associated with expansion and language expertise is associated with renormalization. Previous studies on language proficiency development primarily focused on between-subjects, quasiexperimental comparisons of monolinguals and bilinguals. This study proposes a new paradigm to examine language expertise and cortical thickness within heritage bilinguals (n = 215), as well as between bilinguals and monolinguals (n = 145), using data combined from eight previous magnetic resonance imaging studies. In general, results highlight variability within bilinguals, finding relationships between cortical thickness and English proficiency that are relatively consistent within monolinguals, but inconsistent within bilinguals. In all participants, higher levels of proficiency in English-monolinguals' only language and bilinguals' second but stronger language-were negatively related to cortical thickness. In bilinguals, higher proficiency in the weaker, albeit first learned, language was positively related to cortical thickness. Moreover, there was an interaction between language group and English proficiency in predicting cortical thickness, such that the relationship between proficiency and thickness was stronger in monolinguals than in bilinguals. Findings also demonstrate that the regions associated with language expertise differ between bilinguals and monolinguals. Future directions for cognitive-developmental neuroscience research in bilinguals are suggested, particularly the longitudinal examination of cortical changes in relation to bilingual experiences.

Effective connectivity in the default mode network after paediatric traumatic brain injury.

Children who experience a traumatic brain injury (TBI) are at elevated risk for a range of negative cognitive and neuropsychological outcomes. Identifying which children are at greatest risk for negative outcomes can be difficult due to the heterogeneity of TBI. To address this barrier, the current study applied a novel method of characterizing brain connectivity networks, Bayesian multi-subject vector autoregressive modelling (BVAR-connect), which used white matter integrity as priors to evaluate effective connectivity-the time-dependent relationship in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activity between two brain regions-within the default mode network (DMN). In a prospective longitudinal study, children ages 8-15 years with mild to severe TBI underwent diffusion tensor imaging and resting state fMRI 7 weeks after injury; post-concussion and anxiety symptoms were assessed 7 months after injury. The goals of this study were to (1) characterize differences in positive effective connectivity of resting-state DMN circuitry between healthy controls and children with TBI, (2) determine if severity of TBI was associated with differences in DMN connectivity and (3) evaluate whether patterns of DMN effective connectivity predicted persistent post-concussion symptoms and anxiety. Healthy controls had unique positive connectivity that mostly emerged from the inferior temporal lobes. In contrast, children with TBI had unique effective connectivity among orbitofrontal and parietal regions. These positive orbitofrontal-parietal DMN effective connectivity patterns also differed by TBI severity and were associated with persisting behavioural outcomes. Effective connectivity may be a sensitive neuroimaging marker of TBI severity as well as a predictor of chronic post-concussion symptoms and anxiety.

Cortical Thickness in bilingual and monolingual children: Relationships to language use and language skill.

There is a growing body of evidence based on adult neuroimaging that suggests that the brain adapts to bilingual experiences to support language proficiency. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is a useful source of data for evaluating this claim during childhood, as it involves data from a large sample of American children. Using the baseline ABCD Study data collected at ages nine and ten, the goal of this study was to identify differences in cortical thickness between bilinguals and monolinguals and to evaluate how variability in English vocabulary and English use within bilinguals might explain these group differences. We identified bilingual participants as children who spoke a non-English language and were exposed to the non-English language at home. We then identified a matched sample of English monolingual participants based on age, sex, pubertal status, parent education, household income, non-verbal IQ, and handedness. Bilinguals had thinner cortex than monolinguals in widespread cortical regions. Within bilinguals, more English use was associated with greater frontal and parietal cortical thickness; greater English vocabulary was associated with greater frontal and temporal cortical thickness. These findings replicate and extend previous research with bilingual children and highlight unexplained cortical thickness differences between bilinguals and monolinguals.

"Doing What I can, but I got no Magic Wand:" A Snapshot of Early Childhood Educator Experiences and Efforts to Ensure Quality During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted early childhood programs serving infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in dramatic ways. After temporarily closing, many educators quickly adapted their procedures to ensure children's safety as they reopened to provide childcare for essential workers and then the community at large. This manuscript reports on statewide efforts to continue quality improvement initiatives for early childhood programs amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. We first describe the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic for over 2000 educators-teachers, administrators, and specialists-who completed surveys in the Spring and Fall of 2020. These survey data come from a statewide system called the Texas Early Childhood Professional Development System (TECPDS), designed to track the professional development needs/progress of early childhood educators. Second, we describe an example of how a statewide professional development and quality improvement program shifted to remote delivery during the pandemic. As an increasing number of educators turn to virtual training resources, we explain lessons learned from these response efforts and how they can inform future virtual professional development efforts, even amidst crisis, to ensure that a focus on quality improvement continues while supporting teachers' individual needs.

BVAR-Connect: A Variational Bayes Approach to Multi-Subject Vector Autoregressive Models for Inference on Brain Connectivity Networks.

In this paper we propose BVAR-connect, a variational inference approach to a Bayesian multi-subject vector autoregressive (VAR) model for inference on effective brain connectivity based on resting-state functional MRI data. The modeling framework uses a Bayesian variable selection approach that flexibly integrates multi-modal data, in particular structural diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data, into the prior construction. The variational inference approach we develop allows scalability of the methods and results in the ability to estimate subject- and group-level brain connectivity networks over whole-brain parcellations of the data. We provide a brief description of a user-friendly MATLAB GUI released for public use. We assess performance on simulated data, where we show that the proposed inference method can achieve comparable accuracy to the sampling-based Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach but at a much lower computational cost. We also address the case of subject groups with imbalanced sample sizes. Finally, we illustrate the methods on resting-state functional MRI and structural DTI data on children with a history of traumatic injury.

Highly proficient, balanced bilingualism is related to thinner cortex in two cognitive control regions.

Whereas some bilinguals have one language that is dominant, others attain high proficiency in both languages. This variation is likely explained by a combination of environmental and genetic factors; however, there is a lapse in research on the neural underpinnings of bilingual proficiency. No study to date has examined how highly proficient bilingualism that is balanced relates to brain morphology in adults. Our present study analyzed the brains of 200 Spanish-English bilingual adults. Bilingual proficiency was measured and weighted by the degree of balance across the two languages. It was found that having higher dual language proficiency was related to thinner cortex in two regions: the left anterior prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the right anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Neither English nor Spanish proficiency alone could account for neuroanatomical differences. Our findings suggest that thinner cortex of the left anterior PFC and the right ACC in adults with highly proficient, balanced bilingualism is how the adult brain reflects a lifetime of learning to flexibly adapt and utilize both languages and suggests the involvement of these structures in maintaining and increasing dual language proficiency.

Prefrontal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has a domain-specific impact on bilingual language control.

Researchers debate whether domain-general cognitive control supports bilingual language control through brain regions such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a method to alter brain activity, which can lead to causal attribution of task performance to regional brain activity. The current study examined whether the DLPFC enables domain-general control for between-language switching and nonlinguistic switching and whether the control enabled by DLPFC differs between bilinguals and monolinguals. tDCS was applied to the DLPFC of bilingual and monolingual young adults before they performed linguistic and nonlinguistic switching measures. For bilinguals, left DLPFC stimulation selectively worsened nonlinguistic switching, but not within-language switching. Left DLPFC stimulation also resulted in higher overall accuracy on bilingual picture-naming. These findings suggest that language control and cognitive control are distinct processes in relation to the left DLPFC. The left DLPFC may aid bilingual language control, but stimulating it does not benefit nonlinguistic control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Age of acquisition impacts the brain differently depending on neuroanatomical metric.

Although researchers generally agree that a certain set of brain areas underlie bilingual language processing, there is discrepancy regarding what effect timing of language acquisition has on these regions. We aimed to investigate the neuroanatomical correlates of age of acquisition (AoA), which has been examined previously, but with inconsistent results, likely influenced by methodological differences across studies. We analyzed gray matter density, volume, and thickness using whole-brain linear models in 334 bilinguals and monolinguals. Neuroanatomical correlates of AoA differed depending on gray matter metric. Relative to early bilinguals, late bilinguals had thicker cortex in language processing and cognitive control regions, and greater density in multiple frontal areas and the right middle temporal and supramarginal gyri. Early bilinguals had greater volume than late bilinguals in the left middle temporal gyrus. Overall, volume was the least sensitive to AoA-related differences. Multiple regions not classically implicated in dual-language processing were also found, which highlights the important role of whole-brain analyses in neuroscience. This is the first study to investigate AoA and gray matter thickness, volume, and density all in the same sample. We conclude that cognitive models of bilingualism should consider the roles of development and neuroanatomical metric in driving our understanding of bilingual and monolingual language organization.

Parietal lobe volume distinguishes attentional control in bilinguals and monolinguals: A structural MRI study.

Research suggests that bilingualism is associated with increases in parietal gray matter volume (GMV). These parietal GMV increases are a source of variability that may help explain the reported bilingual/monolingual differences in attentional control. The current study examined how parietal GMV variability and a participant's language background predicted Simon task performance. GMV measures were extracted from the bilateral angular and supramarginal gyri from participants' MRI scans using Freesurfer image analysis suite. Contrary to expectations, bilinguals did not outperform monolinguals on the Simon task. In fact, bilinguals had slower response times across all conditions of the task (incongruent, congruent, and neutral) than monolinguals. In addition, GMV in the right supramarginal gyrus was negatively associated with response times for congruent trials for bilinguals, and positively associated with these response times for monolinguals. The difference in the relationships between parietal GMV and task performance suggests that bilinguals rely on spatial attention to complete the Simon task, while monolinguals may rely on verbal attention. These results help to connect bilingual advantages in tasks requiring spatial attention (e.g., attentional control) with bilingual disadvantages in tasks requiring verbal attention (e.g., verbal fluency).

Symbiosis, Parasitism and Bilingual Cognitive Control: A Neuroemergentist Perspective.

Interest in the intersection between bilingualism and cognitive control and accessibility to neuroimaging methods has resulted in numerous studies with a variety of interpretations of the bilingual cognitive advantage. Neurocomputational Emergentism (or Neuroemergentism for short) is a new framework for understanding this relationship between bilingualism and cognitive control. This framework considers Emergence, in which two small elements are recombined in an interactive manner, yielding a non-linear effect. Added to this is the notion that Emergence can be captured in neural systems using computationally inspired models. This review poses that bilingualism and cognitive control, as examined through the Neuroemergentist framework, are interwoven through development and involve the non-linear growth of cognitive processing encompassing brain areas that combine and recombine, in symbiotic and parasitic ways, in order to handle more complex types of processing. The models that have sought to explain the neural substrates of bilingual cognitive differences will be discussed with a reinterpretation of the entire bilingual cognitive advantage within a Neuroemergentist framework incorporating its neural bases. It will conclude by discussing how this new Neuroemergentist approach alters our view of the effects of language experience on cognitive control. Avenues to move beyond the simple notion of a bilingual advantage or lack thereof will be proposed.

Becoming a balanced, proficient bilingual: Predictions from age of acquisition & genetic background.

Genetic variants related to dopamine functioning (e.g., the ANKK1/TaqIa polymorphism within the DRD2 gene and the Val158Met polymorphism within the COMT gene) have previously been shown to predict cognitive flexibility and learning (e.g., Colzato et al., 2010; Stelzel et al., 2010). Additionally, researchers have found that these genetic variants may also predict second language learning (Mamiya et al., 2016), although this relationship may change across the lifespan (Sugiura et al., 2011). The current study examined the role of the ANKK1/TaqIa and Val158Met polymorphisms along with age of second language acquisition (AoA) in order to predict levels of bilingual proficiency in Spanish-English bilinguals. Results indicated a three-way interaction such that the relationship between the genetic variants and bilingual proficiency depended on AoA. At earlier AoAs, having the genetic variant associated with higher levels of subcortical dopamine (A1+) predicted the highest levels of bilingual proficiency. At later AoAs, individuals with the genetic variant associated with cortical dopamine levels that are balanced between stability and flexibility (Val/Met) predicted the highest levels of bilingual proficiency. These results fit with theories about the development of language as a subcortical process early in life and as a cortical process later in life (Hernandez & Li, 2007), as well as the importance of both stability and flexibility in bilingual language development (Green & Abutalebi, 2013). Finally, this study raises questions about the direction of causality between bilingualism and cognitive control, which is central to the debate over the "bilingual advantage."

Anterior insular thickness predicts speech sound learning ability in bilinguals.

A previous fMRI study of novel speech sound learning, tied to the methods and results presented here, identified groups of advanced and novice learners and related their classification to neural activity. To complement those results and better elucidate the role of the entire neural system in speech learning, the current study analyzed the neuroanatomical data with the goals of 1) uncovering the regions of interest (ROIs) that predicted speech learning performance in a sample of monolingual and bilingual adults, and 2) examining if the relationship between cortical thickness from selected ROIs and individual learning ability depends on language group. The ROIs selected were brain regions well-established in the literature as areas associated with language and speech processing (i.e., Transverse Superior Temporal Gyrus, anterior insula and posterior insula, all bilaterally). High-resolution brain scans (T1-weighted) were acquired from 23 Spanish-English bilinguals and 20 English monolingual adults. The thickness of the left anterior insula significantly predicted speech sound learning ability in bilinguals but not monolinguals. These results suggest that aptitude for learning a new language is associated with variations in the cortical thickness of the left anterior insula in bilinguals. These findings may provide insight into the higher order mechanisms involved in speech perception and advance our understanding of the unique strategies employed by the bilingual brain during language learning.

Individual differences in the bilingual brain: The role of language background and DRD2 genotype in verbal and non-verbal cognitive control.

Bilingual language control may involve cognitive control, including inhibition and switching. These types of control have been previously associated with neural activity in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). In previous studies, the DRD2 gene, related to dopamine availability in the striatum, has been found to play a role in neural activity during cognitive control tasks, with carriers of the gene's A1 allele showing different patterns of activity in inferior frontal regions during cognitive control tasks than non-carriers. The current study sought to extend these findings to the domain of bilingual language control. Forty-nine Spanish-English bilinguals participated in this study by providing DNA samples through saliva, completing background questionnaires, and performing a language production task (picture-naming), a non-verbal inhibition task (Simon task), and a non-verbal switching task (shape-color task) in the fMRI scanner. The fMRI data were analyzed to determine whether variation in the genetic background or bilingual language background predicts neural activity in the IFG and ACC during these three tasks. Results indicate that genetic and language background variables predicted neural activity in the IFG during English picture naming. Variation in only the genetic background predicted neural activity in the ACC during the shape-color switching task; variation in only the language background predicted neural activity in the ACC and IFG during the Simon task. These results suggest that variation in the DRD2 gene should not be ignored when drawing conclusions about bilingual verbal and non-verbal cognitive control.

Beyond the bilingual advantage: The potential role of genes and environment on the development of cognitive control.

In recent years there has been considerable debate about the presence or absence of a bilingual advantage in tasks that involve cognitive control. Our previous work has established evidence of differences in brain activity between monolinguals and bilinguals in both word learning and in the avoidance of interference during a picture selection task. Recent models of cognitive control have highlighted the importance of a set of neural structures that may show differential tuning due to exposure to two languages. There is also evidence that genetic factors play a role in the availability of dopamine in neural structures involved in cognitive control. Thus, it is important to investigate whether there are interactions effects generating variability in language acquisition when attributed to genetic (e.g., characteristics of dopamine turnover) and environmental (e.g., exposure to two languages) factors. Here preliminary results from genotyping of a sample of bilingual and monolingual individuals are reported. They reveal different distributions in allele frequencies of the DRD2/ANKK1 taq1A polymorphism. These results bring up the possibility that bilinguals may exhibit additional flexibility due to differences in genetic characteristics relative to monolinguals. Future studies should consider genotype as a possible contributing factor to the development of cognitive control across individuals with different language learning histories.