Nurturing Attention through Nature.

BACKGROUND: Previous research suggests an association between exposure to nature and improved attention. However, no observational studies explored the underlying mechanisms or considered bluespace, and none used Polish data. We investigated the association between exposure to nature and attention, and whether it was mediated by nature perception, physical activity and sleep duration. METHODS: Data derived from the case-control NeuroSmog study comprised 195 participants with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 457 participants without ADHD, all aged 10 to 13. Attention was evaluated using the computerized attention network test and the continuous performance test. Lifelong and current exposure to nature, determined by percentage of grass and tree cover and water presence within 500m buffer around residences, as well as domestic garden, were examined through linear, log-linear and negative binomial regressions. Potential pathways were explored using structural equation modelling. RESULTS: Participants with ADHD with higher exposure to tree cover tended to have improved orienting ability, shorter reaction time and fewer correct rejections, while participants without ADHD tended to show decreased alertness and improved orienting ability. Participants with ADHD with higher exposure to grass cover tended to have longer reaction time, decreased alertness, improved orienting ability, reduced target discrimination ability, fewer correct rejections and less risky response style, while participants without ADHD tended to show decreased orienting ability, more mistakes, longer reaction time, better hit rate and more risky response style. Participants without ADHD with water in their neighbourhood tended to have improved orienting ability, fewer mistakes and better hit rate. Participants without ADHD with a garden tended to show improved target discrimination ability, better hit rate and more risky response style. No mediating pathways were revealed. CONCLUSION: Tree cover and presence of garden and water tended to be associated with improved attention in Polish adolescents while grass tended to have negative impact.

Auditory areas are recruited for naturalistic visual meaning in early deaf people.

Congenital deafness enhances responses of auditory cortices to non-auditory tasks, yet the nature of the reorganization is not well understood. Here, naturalistic stimuli are used to induce neural synchrony across early deaf and hearing individuals. Participants watch a silent animated film in an intact version and three versions with gradually distorted meaning. Differences between groups are observed in higher-order auditory cortices in all stimuli, with no statistically significant effects in the primary auditory cortex. Comparison between levels of scrambling revealed a heterogeneity of function in secondary auditory areas. Both hemispheres show greater synchrony in the deaf than in the hearing participants for the intact movie and high-level variants. However, only the right hemisphere shows an increased inter-subject synchrony in the deaf people for the low-level movie variants. An event segmentation validates these results: the dynamics of the right secondary auditory cortex in the deaf people consist of shorter-length events with more transitions than the left. Our results reveal how deaf individuals use their auditory cortex to process visual meaning.

Blind individuals' enhanced ability to sense their own heartbeat is related to the thickness of their occipital cortex.

Blindness is associated with heightened sensory abilities, such as improved hearing and tactile acuity. Moreover, recent evidence suggests that blind individuals are better than sighted individuals at perceiving their own heartbeat, suggesting enhanced interoceptive accuracy. Structural changes in the occipital cortex have been hypothesized as the basis of these behavioral enhancements. Indeed, several studies have shown that congenitally blind individuals have increased cortical thickness within occipital areas compared to sighted individuals, but how these structural differences relate to behavioral enhancements is unclear. This study investigated the relationship between cardiac interoceptive accuracy and cortical thickness in 23 congenitally blind individuals and 23 matched sighted controls. Our results show a significant positive correlation between performance in a heartbeat counting task and cortical thickness only in the blind group, indicating a connection between structural changes in occipital areas and blind individuals' enhanced ability to perceive heartbeats.

Tracking Components of Bilingual Language Control in Speech Production: An fMRI Study Using Functional Localizers.

When bilingual speakers switch back to speaking in their native language (L1) after having used their second language (L2), they often experience difficulty in retrieving words in their L1. This phenomenon is referred to as the L2 after-effect. We used the L2 after-effect as a lens to explore the neural bases of bilingual language control mechanisms. Our goal was twofold: first, to explore whether bilingual language control draws on domain-general or language-specific mechanisms; second, to investigate the precise mechanism(s) that drive the L2 after-effect. We used a precision fMRI approach based on functional localizers to measure the extent to which the brain activity that reflects the L2 after-effect overlaps with the language network (Fedorenko et al., 2010) and the domain-general multiple demand network (Duncan, 2010), as well as three task-specific networks that tap into interference resolution, lexical retrieval, and articulation. Forty-two Polish-English bilinguals participated in the study. Our results show that the L2 after-effect reflects increased engagement of domain-general but not language-specific resources. Furthermore, contrary to previously proposed interpretations, we did not find evidence that the effect reflects increased difficulty related to lexical access, articulation, and the resolution of lexical interference. We propose that difficulty of speech production in the picture naming paradigm-manifested as the L2 after-effect-reflects interference at a nonlinguistic level of task schemas or a general increase of cognitive control engagement during speech production in L1 after L2.

Pathways linking greenspace to behavioural problems in Polish children.

Background: Previous cross-sectional studies have found a beneficial relationship between greenspace and children's behaviour. Nevertheless, evidence on the mechanisms underlying this association remains scant. We examined whether the availability of greenspace was related to fewer behavioural problems in Polish children and investigated potential mechanisms. Methods: Data were obtained from the case-control NeuroSmog study, in which children with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were tested from October 2020 to September 2022. The analytic sample comprised 679 children aged 10-13 years. Parents reported internalizing, externalizing, and total behavioural problems using the Child Behaviour Check List (CBCL), as well as information about the presence of a domestic garden and potential mediators: greenspace perception, neighbourhood social cohesion, and physical activity. Tree and grass covers were extracted in 500 m and 1 km buffers around lifelong residences. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to examine the psychosocial pathways linking the greenspace metrics to behavioural problems. Results: Greenspace was only indirectly related to fewer behavioural problems. Specifically, tree cover was related to greater levels of physical activity which, in turn, was related to fewer internalizing and total behavioural problems. Tree cover and presence of garden were related to greenspace perception which, in turn, was associated with higher neighbourhood social cohesion which, in turn, was linked to fewer behavioural problems. The patterns of associations in children without ADHD were very similar to those in the full sample except that the associations from garden to greenspace perception and from physical activity to total behavioural problems were no longer significant. The only association persisted among girls was from neighbourhood social cohesion to behavioural problems and among boys were from tree cover to physical activity and tree cover and garden to greenspace perception. Conclusion: Trees and garden, but not grass, are linked to fewer behavioural problems through greenspace perception, neighbourhood social cohesion, and physical activity in Polish children.

Domain-general and language-specific contributions to speech production in a second language: an fMRI study using functional localizers.

For bilinguals, speaking in a second language (L2) compared to the native language (L1) is usually more difficult. In this study we asked whether the difficulty in L2 production reflects increased demands imposed on domain-general or core language mechanisms. We compared the brain response to speech production in L1 and L2 within two functionally-defined networks in the brain: the Multiple Demand (MD) network and the language network. We found that speech production in L2 was linked to a widespread increase of brain activity in the domain-general MD network. The language network did not show a similarly robust differences in processing speech in the two languages, however, we found increased response to L2 production in the language-specific portion of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). To further explore our results, we have looked at domain-general and language-specific response within the brain structures postulated to form a Bilingual Language Control (BLC) network. Within this network, we found a robust increase in response to L2 in the domain-general, but also in some language-specific voxels including in the left IFG. Our findings show that L2 production strongly engages domain-general mechanisms, but only affects language sensitive portions of the left IFG. These results put constraints on the current model of bilingual language control by precisely disentangling the domain-general and language-specific contributions to the difficulty in speech production in L2.

Are blind individuals immune to bodily illusions? Somatic rubber hand illusion in the blind revisited.

Multisensory awareness of one's own body relies on the integration of signals from various sensory modalities such as vision, touch, and proprioception. But how do blind individuals perceive their bodies without visual cues, and does the brain of a blind person integrate bodily senses differently from a sighted person? To address this question, we aimed to replicate the only two previous studies on this topic, which claimed that blind individuals do not experience the somatic rubber hand illusion, a bodily illusion triggered by the integration of correlated tactile and proprioceptive signals from the two hands. We used a larger sample size than the previous studies and added Bayesian analyses to examine statistical evidence in favor of the lack of an illusion effect. Moreover, we employed tests to investigate whether enhanced tactile acuity and cardiac interoceptive accuracy in blind individuals could also explain the weaker illusion. We tested 36 blind individuals and 36 age- and sex-matched sighted volunteers. The results show that blind individuals do not experience the somatic rubber hand illusion based on questionnaire ratings and behavioral measures that assessed changes in hand position sense toward the location of the rubber hand. This conclusion is supported by Bayesian evidence in favor of the null hypothesis. The findings confirm that blind individuals do not experience the somatic rubber hand illusion, indicating that lack of visual experience leads to permanent changes in multisensory bodily perception. In summary, our study suggests that changes in multisensory integration of tactile and proprioceptive signals may explain why blind individuals are "immune" to the nonvisual version of the rubber hand illusion.

Does exposure to nature make children more intelligent? Analysis in Polish children with and without ADHD.

Previous studies have shown that exposure to nature and physical activity (PA) may be associated with higher intelligence in children. We examined whether there is an association between lifelong exposure to greenspace and bluespace and intelligence in children aged 10-13 with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and whether PA mediates this association. The sample (N = 714) was collected within the NeuroSmog case-control study, where children with (N = 206) and without ADHD (N = 508) were recruited from 18 towns in Southern Poland. Nature exposure was estimated as the sum of the z-scores of the objective and perceived measures. Objective greenspace exposure was defined as the percentage of grass and tree cover in 500 m and 1 km buffers around lifelong residential addresses, respectively. Objective bluespace exposure was defined as the percentage of water cover in 500 m and 1 km buffers. Perceived greenspace/bluespace was measured as the parent-rated availability, quality, and use of greenspace/bluespace. Intelligence was assessed using the Polish version of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, 5th edition (SB5). SB5 Full Scale Intelligence Quotient (IQ), Nonverbal IQ, Verbal IQ, five factor and ten subtest scores were analysed as outcomes. The associations between nature and IQ scores were assessed by linear regressions separately for cases and controls, adjusting the models for sex, parental education, and urbanicity. Structural equation modeling was implemented to test whether PA mediated the association between nature and intelligence. None of the greenspace or bluespace measures were consistently associated with intelligence. PA was not found to be a mediator. We did not find evidence that higher lifelong nature exposure is associated with higher intelligence in Polish schoolchildren with or without ADHD. This casts doubts on whether exposure to nature has relevant influence on IQ.

Air pollution and attention in Polish schoolchildren with and without ADHD.

BACKGROUND: Development and functioning of attention-a key component of human cognition-can be affected by environmental factors. We investigated whether long- and short-term exposure to particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter < 10 µm (PM10) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are related to attention in 10- to 13-year-old children living in Polish towns recruited in the NeuroSmog case-control study. METHODS: We investigated associations between air pollution and attention separately in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, n = 187), a sensitive, at-risk population with impaired attention and in population-based typically developing children (TD, n = 465). Alerting, orienting, and executive aspects of attention were measured using the attention network test (ANT), while inhibitory control was measured with the continuous performance test (CPT). We assessed long-term exposure to NO2 and PM10 using novel hybrid land use regression (LUR) models. Short-term exposures to NO2 and PM10 were assigned to each subject using measurements taken at the air pollution monitoring station nearest to their home address. We tested associations for each exposure-outcome pair using adjusted linear and negative binomial regressions. RESULTS: We found that long-term exposures to both NO2 and PM10 were associated with worse visual attention in children with ADHD. Short-term exposure to NO2 was associated with less efficient executive attention in TD children and more errors in children with ADHD. It was also associated with shorter CPT response times in TD children; however, this effect was accompanied by a trend towards more CPT commission errors, suggestive of more impulsive performance in these subjects. Finally, we found that short-term PM10 exposure was associated with fewer omission errors in CPT in TD children. CONCLUSIONS: Exposure to air pollution, especially short-term exposure to NO2, may have a negative impact on attention in children. In sensitive populations, this impact might be different than in the general population.

Overlapping but separate number representations in the intraparietal sulcus-Probing format- and modality-independence in sighted Braille readers.

The Triple-Code Model stipulates that numerical information from different formats and modalities converges on a common magnitude representation in the Intraparietal Sulcus (IPS). To what extent the representations of all numerosity forms overlap remains unsolved. It has been postulated that the representation of symbolic numerosities (for example, Arabic digits) is sparser and grounded in an existing representation that codes for non-symbolic numerosity information (i.e., sets of objects). Other theories argue that numerical symbols represent a separate number category that emerges only during education. Here, we tested a unique group of sighted tactile Braille readers with numerosities 2, 4, 6 and 8 in three number notations: Arabic digits, sets of dots, tactile Braille numbers. Using univariate methods, we showed a consistent overlap in activations evoked by these three number notations. This result shows that all three used notations are represented in the IPS, which may suggest at least a partial overlap between the representations of the three notations used in this experiment. Using MVPA, we found that only non-automatized number information (Braille and sets of dots) allowed successful number classification. However, the numerosity of one notation could not be predicted above chance from the brain activation patterns evoked by another notation (no cross-classification). These results show that the IPS may host independent number codes in overlapping cortical circuits. In addition, they suggest that the level of training in encoding a given type of number information is an important factor that determines the amount of exploitable information and needs to be controlled for in order to identify the neural code underlying numerical information per se.

Family Functioning Style as a Predictor of the Quality of Cognitive Functioning of Primary School Students With ADHD.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to specify whether family communication and satisfaction are predictors of a child's executive functions and whether attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) severity lies in the pathway between these variables. METHOD: Two hundred Polish children with ADHD, aged 10 to 13, were tested using Conners 3, the PU1 Battery of Cognitive Tests and Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, Fifth Edition (SB5). Parents filled out the FACES IV-SOR questionnaire. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses. RESULTS: The quality of family communication and satisfaction did not predict executive functioning in children with ADHD, and ADHD severity did not play a mediating role neither in boys or in girls. Intelligent quotient was the only predictor of executive functioning in the group of boys. CONCLUSION: These results contrast with those of previous studies that have shown the existence of similar associations in other cultural contexts.

Heartbeat counting accuracy is enhanced in blind individuals.

Blind individuals have superior abilities to perform perceptual tasks that rely on exteroceptive information, since visual deprivation is associated with heightened cross-modal plasticity. However, it is unknown whether neuroplasticity after visual loss also affects interoception, that is, the sensations arising from one's inner organs that convey information about the physiological state of the body. Herein, we examine the influence of blindness on cardiac interoception, which is an interoceptive submodality that has important links to emotional processing and bodily self-awareness. We tested 36 blind and 36 age- and sex-matched sighted volunteers and examined their cardiac interoceptive ability using the heartbeat counting task. The results showed that blind individuals had significantly higher accuracy in perceiving their heartbeat than did individuals in a matched sighted control group. In contrast, there were no significant differences between the groups in the metacognitive dimensions of cardiac interoception or the purely physiological measurement of heart rate, thereby underscoring that the improved accuracy likely reflects a superior perceptual sensitivity to cardiac interoceptive signals in blind individuals. We conclude that visual deprivation leads to an enhanced ability to count one's own heartbeats, which has important implications for the study of the extent of cross-modal plasticity after visual loss, understanding emotional processing in blind individuals, and learning how bodily self-awareness can develop and be sustained in the absence of visual experience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The perception of affective and discriminative touch in blind individuals.

Enhanced tactile acuity in blindness is among the most widely reported results of neuroplasticity following prolonged visual deprivation. However, tactile submodalities other than discriminative touch are profoundly understudied in blind individuals. Here, we examined the influence of blindness on two tactile submodalities, affective and discriminative touch, the former being vital for social functioning and emotional processing. We tested 36 blind individuals and 36 age- and sex-matched sighted volunteers. In Experiment 1, we measured the perception of affective tactile signals by asking participants to rate the pleasantness of touch delivered on the palm (nonhairy skin, sparsely innervated with C tactile [CT] fibers) or the forearm (hairy skin, densely innervated with CT fibers) in a CT-optimal versus a CT-nonoptimal manner using a paradigm grounded in studies on tactile sensory neurophysiology. In Experiment 2, we implemented a classic task assessing discriminative touch abilities, the grating orientation task. We found that blind individuals rated the touch as more pleasant when delivered on the palm than on the forearm, while the opposite pattern was observed for sighted participants, who rated stimulation on the forearm as more pleasant than stimulation on the palm. We also replicated the previous findings showing enhanced discriminative tactile acuity in blind individuals. Altogether, our results suggest that blind individuals might experience affective touch differently than sighted individuals, with relatively greater pleasantness perceived on the palm. These results provide a broader insight into somatosensory perception in blind individuals, for the first time taking into consideration the socioemotional aspect of touch.

Association of residential and school green- and bluespace with academic performance in 10-13-year-old Polish schoolchildren with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

BACKGROUND: Several studies, mostly based on the USA data, have reported that school greenspace was associated with better academic performance. However, nearly all of them were conducted on aggregated data. We are among the first individual data-based studies worldwide to examine whether exposure to school and residential green- and bluespace can boost academic performance. METHODS: NeuroSmog is an ongoing case-control study investigating the impact of air pollution on brain development in children with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). 658 children aged 10 to 13 years from 18 large and small towns in southern Poland constituted the analytical sample. Information about latest end-of-year school grades in Polish and maths was collected by the parent report while perceived academic performance in these subjects was collected by the Youth Self-Report. Tree, grass, and water cover, as well as overall vegetation, were abstracted in Euclidean buffers of 500 and 1000 m around concurrent school and residential addresses. Perceived green- and bluespace data were also collected. Adjusted for age, sex, parent education, financial situation, and urbanicity, logistic models were fitted to assess the associations between each exposure-outcome pair. RESULT: We found no consistent associations between academic performance and school or residential green- and bluespace. This held true for children with and without ADHD. CONCLUSIONS: Higher residential and school green- and bluespace do not seem to be sufficient for better academic performance.

Superior visual rhythm discrimination in expert musicians is most likely not related to cross-modal recruitment of the auditory cortex.

Training can influence behavioral performance and lead to brain reorganization. In particular, training in one modality, for example, auditory, can improve performance in another modality, for example, visual. Previous research suggests that one of the mechanisms behind this phenomenon could be the cross-modal recruitment of the sensory areas, for example, the auditory cortex. Studying expert musicians offers a chance to explore this process. Rhythm is an aspect of music that can be presented in various modalities. We designed an fMRI experiment in which professional pianists and non-musicians discriminated between two sequences of rhythms presented auditorily (series of sounds) or visually (series of flashes). Behavioral results showed that musicians performed in both visual and auditory rhythmic tasks better than non-musicians. We found no significant between-group differences in fMRI activations within the auditory cortex. However, we observed that musicians had increased activation in the right Inferior Parietal Lobe when compared to non-musicians. We conclude that the musicians' superior visual rhythm discrimination is not related to cross-modal recruitment of the auditory cortex; instead, it could be related to activation in higher-level, multimodal areas in the cortex.

Neural network for Braille reading and the speech-reading convergence in the blind: Similarities and differences to visual reading.

All writing systems represent units of spoken language. Studies on the neural correlates of reading in different languages show that this skill relies on access to brain areas dedicated to speech processing. Speech-reading convergence onto a common perisylvian network is therefore considered universal among different writing systems. Using fMRI, we test whether this holds true also for tactile Braille reading in the blind. The neural networks for Braille and visual reading overlapped in the left ventral occipitotemporal (vOT) cortex. Even though we showed similar perisylvian specialization for speech in both groups, blind subjects did not engage this speech system for reading. In contrast to the sighted, speech-reading convergence in the blind was absent in the perisylvian network. Instead, the blind engaged vOT not only in reading but also in speech processing. The involvement of the vOT in speech processing and its engagement in reading in the blind suggests that vOT is included in a modality independent language network in the blind, also evidenced by functional connectivity results. The analysis of individual speech-reading convergence suggests that there may be segregated neuronal populations in the vOT for speech processing and reading in the blind.

NeuroSmog: Determining the Impact of Air Pollution on the Developing Brain: Project Protocol.

Exposure to airborne particulate matter (PM) may affect neurodevelopmental outcomes in children. The mechanisms underlying these relationships are not currently known. We aim to assess whether PM affects the developing brains of schoolchildren in Poland, a country characterized by high levels of PM pollution. Children aged from 10 to 13 years (n = 800) are recruited to participate in this case-control study. Cases (children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)) are being recruited by field psychologists. Population-based controls are being sampled from schools. The study area comprises 18 towns in southern Poland characterized by wide-ranging levels of PM. Comprehensive psychological assessments are conducted to assess cognitive and social functioning. Participants undergo structural, diffusion-weighted, task, and resting-state magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). PM concentrations are estimated using land use regression models, incorporating information from air monitoring networks, dispersion models, and characteristics of roads and other land cover types. The estimated concentrations will be assigned to the prenatal and postnatal residential and preschool/school addresses of the study participants. We will assess whether long-term exposure to PM affects brain function, structure, and connectivity in healthy children and in those diagnosed with ADHD. This study will provide novel, in-depth understanding of the neurodevelopmental effects of PM pollution.

Multimodal imaging of brain reorganization in hearing late learners of sign language.

The neural plasticity underlying language learning is a process rather than a single event. However, the dynamics of training-induced brain reorganization have rarely been examined, especially using a multimodal magnetic resonance imaging approach, which allows us to study the relationship between functional and structural changes. We focus on sign language acquisition in hearing adults who underwent an 8-month long course and five neuroimaging sessions. We assessed what neural changes occurred as participants learned a new language in a different modality-as reflected by task-based activity, connectivity changes, and co-occurring structural alterations. Major changes in the activity pattern appeared after just 3 months of learning, as indicated by increases in activation within the modality-independent perisylvian language network, together with increased activation in modality-dependent parieto-occipital, visuospatial and motion-sensitive regions. Despite further learning, no alterations in activation were detected during the following months. However, enhanced coupling between left-lateralized occipital and inferior frontal regions was observed as the proficiency increased. Furthermore, an increase in gray matter volume was detected in the left inferior frontal gyrus which peaked at the end of learning. Overall, these results showed complexity and temporal distinctiveness of various aspects of brain reorganization associated with learning of new language in different sensory modality.

Early deafness leads to re-shaping of functional connectivity beyond the auditory cortex.

Early sensory deprivation, such as deafness, shapes brain development in multiple ways. Deprived auditory areas become engaged in the processing of stimuli from the remaining modalities and in high-level cognitive tasks. Yet, structural and functional changes were also observed in non-deprived brain areas, which may suggest the whole-brain network changes in deaf individuals. To explore this possibility, we compared the resting-state functional network organization of the brain in early deaf adults and hearing controls and examined global network segregation and integration. Relative to hearing controls, deaf adults exhibited decreased network segregation and an altered modular structure. In the deaf, regions of the salience network were coupled with the fronto-parietal network, while in the hearing controls, they were coupled with other large-scale networks. Deaf adults showed weaker connections between auditory and somatomotor regions, stronger coupling between the fronto-parietal network and several other large-scale networks (visual, memory, cingulo-opercular and somatomotor), and an enlargement of the default mode network. Our findings suggest that brain plasticity in deaf adults is not limited to changes in the auditory cortex but additionally alters the coupling between other large-scale networks and the development of functional brain modules. These widespread functional connectivity changes may provide a mechanism for the superior behavioral performance of the deaf in visual and attentional tasks.

Functional reorganization of the reading network in the course of foreign language acquisition.

During foreign language acquisition neural representations of native language and foreign language assimilate. In the reading network, this assimilation leads to a shift from effortful processing to automated reading. Longitudinal studies can track this transition and reveal dynamics that might not become apparent in behavior. Here, we report results from a longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, which tracked functional changes in the reading network of beginning learners of Greek over one year. We deliberately chose Greek as foreign language that would have similar orthographic transparency but a different alphabet than the native language (Polish). fMRI scans with lexical and semantic decision tasks were performed at five different time points (every ~3 months). Classical language areas (the left inferior frontal gyrus, the left precentral gyrus, and the bilateral supplementary motor cortex), and cognitive control areas (left inferior parietal lobe and bilateral anterior cingulate cortex) showed stronger activation after the first months of instruction as compared to the activation before instruction. This pattern occured in both tasks. Task-related activity in the reading network remained constant throughout the remaining 6 months of learning and was also present in a follow-up scan 3 months after the end of the course. A similar pattern was demonstrated by the analysis of convergence between foreign and native languages occurring within the first months of learning. Additionally, in the lexical task, the extent of spatial overlap, between foreign and native language in Broca's area increased constantly from the beginning till the end of training. Our findings support the notion that reorganization of language networks is achieved after a relatively short time of foreign language instruction. We also demonstrate that cognitive control areas are recruited in foreign language reading at low proficiency levels. No apparent changes in the foreign or native reading network occur after the initial 3 months of learning. This suggests that task demand might be more important than proficiency in regulating the resources needed for efficient foreign language reading.