Cortical thickness increases after simultaneous interpretation training

Abstract

Simultaneous interpretation is a complex cognitive task that not only demands multilingual language processing, but also requires application of extreme levels of domain-general cognitive control. We used MRI to longitudinally measure cortical thickness in simultaneous interpretation trainees before and after a Master's program in conference interpreting. We compared them to multilingual control participants scanned at the same interval of time. Increases in cortical thickness were specific to trainee interpreters. Increases were observed in regions involved in lower-level, phonetic processing (left posterior superior temporal gyrus, anterior supramarginal gyrus and planum temporale), in the higher-level formulation of propositional speech (right angular gyrus) and in the conversion of items from working memory into a sequence (right dorsal premotor cortex), and finally, in domain-general executive control and attention (right parietal lobule). Findings are consistent with the linguistic requirements of simultaneous interpretation and also with the more general cognitive demands on attentional control for expert performance in simultaneous interpreting. Our findings may also reflect beneficial, potentially protective effects of simultaneous interpretation training, which has previously been shown to confer enhanced skills in certain executive and attentional domains over and above those conferred by bilingualism.

Taxing the bilingual mind: Effects of simultaneous interpreting experience on verbal and executive mechanisms

“…First, a study on executive functions (including STM and updating tasks) revealed no differences between UMs and aspiring interpreters about to start their training (Rosiers, Woumans, Duyck & Eyckmans, 2019). Second, as seen above, longitudinal research comparing ISs before and after periods of intensive practice (and UMs at the same time points) has shown increased performance for the trainees in key SI-related functions, such as WM (Antonova Ünlü & Sağın Şimşek, 2018), in addition to structural (Hervais-Adelman et al, 2017) and functional (Hervais-Adelman et al, 2015) brain changes in critical hubs. Complementarily, various neurocognitive effects in PSIs are significantly associated with their hours of practice (Elmer, Hänggi & Jäncke, 2014) and their years of professional experience (Santilli et al, 2018), indicating that the longer the experience in SI, the greater its effects on particular cognitive systems.…”

Exploring the effect of Relative Language Distance on Bilingual Brain Structure – a cross-sectional VBM study

“…Grey matter volumetric changes have been reported in the inferior parietal lobules (IPL) (e.g., left IPL: Mechelli et al, 2004;bilateral IPLs: Abutalebi et al, 2015b), left inferior frontal cortex (IFC) (e.g., Klein et al, 2014), the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) (e.g., Abutalebi et al, 2012;2015a) and basal ganglia (e.g., left Putamen: Abutalebi et al, 2013b;left Caudate: Zou et al, 2012). These BLC regions have also been reported as the loci of grey matter-related increases in studies of adult second language learning (e.g., left IFC & IPL: Legault et al, 2018;left IFC: Stein et al, 2010), and in studies involving specialized linguistic training, such as simultaneous interpretation (SI) (e.g., right IPL: Hervais-Adelman et al, 2017;left IFC: Martensson et al, 2012). These findings are not surprising.…”

Beyond bilingualism: multilingual experience correlates with caudate volume

“…Sixty-seven of the datasets were acquired as part of a separate study (Hervais-Adelman et al 2017), in which no analyses of the relationship between subcortical morphology and LEXP were carried out. 1 Of the 75 participants 40 had a acquired at least 1 s language before 6 years of age, and may be considered "early bilinguals", and 35 only began acquiring their second and further languages after this age, and may be considered "late bilinguals"; these groups did not differ in terms of LEXP (overall: t (69.13) = 0.385, p = 0.70, proficiency only: t (68.87) = 1.34, p = 0.19) or age (t (66.99) = 1.03, p = 0.31).…”

“…Nevertheless, we are minded to agree with Bialystok (2017) that it could be considered disingenuous to posit that the experience of multilingualism should have no effect on the brain at all. Indeed, there is substantial evidence, also from longitudinal studies, that bilingualism and language training influence brain function (Becker et al 2016;Costumero et al 2015), and also brain structure (Hervais-Adelman et al 2017;Stein et al 2012). These findings are consistent with the notion that learning can indeed change the brain, even structurally, at micro-and macro-structural scales (Zatorre et al 2012).…”