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. 2023 Jun:61:101240.
doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101240. Epub 2023 Apr 11.

Language exposure during infancy is negatively associated with white matter microstructure in the arcuate fasciculus

Katiana A Estrada  1 , Sharnya Govindaraj  2 , Hervé Abdi  2 , Luke E Moraglia  2 , Jason J Wolff  3 , Shoba Sreenath Meera  4 , Stephen R Dager  5 , Robert C McKinstry  6 , Martin A Styner  7 , Lonnie Zwaigenbaum  8 , Joseph Piven  7 , Meghan R Swanson  9 ; IBIS Network
Affiliations

Language exposure during infancy is negatively associated with white matter microstructure in the arcuate fasciculus

Katiana A Estrada et al. Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2023 Jun.

Abstract

Decades of research have established that the home language environment, especially quality of caregiver speech, supports language acquisition during infancy. However, the neural mechanisms behind this phenomenon remain under studied. In the current study, we examined associations between the home language environment and structural coherence of white matter tracts in 52 typically developing infants from English speaking homes in a western society. Infants participated in at least one MRI brain scan when they were 3, 6, 12, and/or 24 months old. Home language recordings were collected when infants were 9 and/or 15 months old. General linear regression models indicated that infants who heard the most adult words and participated in the most conversational turns at 9 months of age also had the lowest fractional anisotropy in the left posterior parieto-temporal arcuate fasciculus at 24 months. Similarly, infants who vocalized the most at 9 months also had the lowest fractional anisotropy in the same tract at 6 months of age. This is one of the first studies to report significant associations between caregiver speech collected in the home and white matter structural coherence in the infant brain. The results are in line with prior work showing that protracted white matter development during infancy confers a cognitive advantage.

Keywords: Arcuate fasciculus; Diffusion tensor imaging; Home language environment; Infancy; Language development.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig.1
Fig.1
Glass brain image with a priori tracts of interest.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
SScatterplots of language environment variables and FA with line of best fit.
Fig.3
Fig.3
Visualization of significant associations on different arc lengths of the left posteriori parieto-temporal arcuate fasciculus generated using Slicer. 3 A. Visualization of CVC at 9 months and 6-month FA of the left posterior parieto-temporal arcuate fasciculus 3B. Visualization of AWC at 9 months and 24-month FA of the left posterior parieto-temporal arcuate fasciculus 3 C. Visualization of CTC at 9 months and 24-month FA of the left posterior parieto-temporal arcuate fasciculus.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Spaghetti plots of FA development in relation to LENA variables. Purple lines indicate individual trajectories of FA development across time. Bold lines are for illustration only and represent FA development at one standard deviation below (blue line) and above the mean (red line) for conversational turn counts at 9 months (Panel A) or adult word counts at 15 months (Panel B).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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