RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Neuroanatomical Correlates in Bilinguals: The Case of Children and Elderly
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 586768
DO 10.1101/586768
A1 García-Pentón, Lorna
A1 Fernández, Yuriem
A1 Duñabeitia, Jon Andoni
A1 Pérez, Alejandro
A1 Carreiras, Manuel
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/03/25/586768.abstract
AB How bilingualism modulates brain areas beyond the language regions is still controversial. Through a comprehensive set of analyses on brain structure, we investigated brain differences between Basque-Spanish bilinguals and monolinguals in children and the elderly, the most sensitive target groups to detect potential brain differences. In particular, we employed Diffusion MRI in combination with T1-MRI, network-based statistics and a graph-theoretical approach to investigate differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in structural connectivity and topological properties of brain networks. Additionally, regional grey and white matter structural differences between groups were examined. The findings suggest that the effects of bilingualism on brain structure are not solid but unstable. However, lifetime experience of active bilingualism may lead to increased neural reserve in ageing, since better global network graph-efficiency has been observed in the elderly lifelong bilinguals compared to monolinguals.