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. 2022 Apr 25:16:816729.
doi: 10.3389/fnins.2022.816729. eCollection 2022.

Greater Similarity Between L1 and L2's Brain Network in Adults Than in Children

Fan Cao  1 , Yuyu Fan  1 , Xin Yan  2 , Wuying Chen  3 , Maddie Dodson-Garrett  2 , Gregory J Spray  2 , Zhao Wang  4 , Yuan Deng  5
Affiliations

Greater Similarity Between L1 and L2's Brain Network in Adults Than in Children

Fan Cao et al. Front Neurosci. .

Abstract

It has been documented that processing L2 and L1 engages a very similar brain network in bilingual adults. However, it is not known whether this similarity is evident in bilingual children as well or it develops with learning from children to adults. In the current study, we compared brain activation in Chinese-English bilingual children and adults during L1 and L2 processing. We found greater similarity between L1 and L2 in adults than in children, supporting the convergence hypothesis which argues that when the proficiency of L2 increases, the L2's brain network converges to the L1's brain network. We also found greater differences between adults and children in the brain for L2 processing than L1 processing, even though there were comparable increase in proficiency from children to adults in L1 and L2. It suggests an elongated developmental course for L2. This study provides important insights about developmental changes in the bilingual brain.

Keywords: Chinese-English; bilingual; development; fMRI; rhyming.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Brain activation in the main effect of language. Brain regions that were more activated in Chinese than in English are in red; brain regions that were more activated in English than in Chinese are in blue.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
First row, brain regions that showed greater activation in Chinese than in English for adults. Second row, brain regions that showed greater activation in Chinese than in English for children. No brain regions showed greater activation in English than in Chinese for either adults or children.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Brain activation in the main effect of age. Brain regions that were more activated in children than in adults (blue). No brain regions were more activated in adults than in children.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Brain activation in the interaction of language by age (first row), including brain activation in the positive interaction (red), and brain regions in the negative interaction (blue). Brain activation in the comparison between adults and children in English (second row). Brain regions that were more activated in adults than in children in English are in red; brain regions that were more activated in children than in adults are in blue. No brain regions showed age differences in Chinese (third row). The interactions were driven by greater age differences in English than in Chinese.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Scatter plots for the correlation between English proficiency and brain activation level at the medial frontal gyrus and right middle frontal gyrus in children and adults. Significant negative correlation was found in children but not in adults at the medial frontal gyrus. The correlation difference between children and adults is not significant. A marginally significant positive correlation was found in the right middle frontal gyrus for children.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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