Neural Stimulation Has a Long-Term Effect on Foreign Vocabulary Acquisition

Abstract

Acquisition of a foreign language is a challenging task that is becoming increasingly more important in the world nowadays. There is evidence suggesting that the frontal and temporal cortices are involved in language processing and comprehension, but it is still unknown whether foreign language acquisition recruits additional cortical areas in a causal manner. For the first time, we used transcranial random noise stimulation on the frontal and parietal brain areas, in order to compare its effect on the acquisition of unknown foreign words and a sham, or placebo, condition was also included. This type of noninvasive neural stimulation enhances cortical activity by boosting the spontaneous activity of neurons. Foreign vocabulary acquisition was tested both immediately and seven days after the stimulation. We found that stimulation on the posterior parietal, but not the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or sham stimulation, significantly improved the memory performance in the long term. These results suggest that the posterior parietal cortex is directly involved in acquisition of foreign vocabulary, thus extending the “linguistic network” to this area.

Transcranial random noise stimulation benefits arithmetic skills

“…The delayed behavioural effect produced by tRNS has been extensively reported by numerous studies (Cappelletti et al, 2013;Cohen Kadosh et al, 2010;Dockery et al, 2009;Jones, Gözenman, & Berryhill, 2014;Nitsche et al, 2006;Pasqualotto, Kobanbay, & Proulx, 2015;Snowball et al, 2013). In particular, Cohen Kadosh et al (2010) and Snowball et al (2013) reported that brain stimulation produced a benefit on numeric competence that lasted at least six months.…”

Language Brain Representation in Bilinguals With Different Age of Appropriation and Proficiency of the Second Language: A Meta-Analysis of Functional Imaging Studies

“…Besides the classical fronto-temporal language areas, also the parietal lobe—particularly the posterior parietal cortex (PPC)—activated in both bilingual groups. This region is not typically devoted to language, although some studies reported its involvement in the performance of some language tasks (for instance in vocabulary learning, see Pasqualotto et al, 2015). Interestingly, this region is relevant to working memory and its activation might, therefore, reflect the heightened necessity for the bilingual speakers to reinforce and elaborate the linguistic information associated with each language (e.g., Gold et al, 2005; Hartwigsen et al, 2010).…”