Structural correlates of spoken language abilities: A surface-based region-of interest morphometry study

Abstract

Brain structure can predict many aspects of human behavior, though the extent of this relationship in healthy adults, particularly for language-related skills, remains largely unknown. The objective of the present study was to explore this relation using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on a group of 21 healthy young adults who completed two language tasks: 1) semantic fluency and 2) sentence generation. For each region of interest, cortical thickness, surface area, and volume were calculated. The results show that verbal fluency scores correlated mainly with measures of brain morphology in the left inferior frontal cortex and bilateral insula. Sentence generation scores correlated with structure of the left inferior parietal and right inferior frontal regions. These results reveal that the anatomy of several structures in frontal and parietal lobes is associated with spoken language performance. The presence of both negative and positive correlations highlights the complex relation between brain and language.

Genome-wide association analyses of individual differences in quantitatively assessed reading- and language-related skills in up to 34,000 people

“…Human abilities to process spoken and written language depend on an array of distributed brain circuits [52][53][54][55][56] . We performed a genetic correlation analysis of our multivariate GenLang GWAS with summary statistics from 58 MRI-based neuroanatomical phenotypes, chosen because they concerned brain areas and/or tracts with known links to language processing [53][54][55][56] . This selection included brain regions involved in early modality-specific pre-processing of spoken and written language, for example the auditory regions in transverse temporal gyrus, also known as Heschl's gyrus, and the superior temporal gyrus (spoken language), and several other temporal regions (written language).…”

Cortical thickness increases after simultaneous interpretation training

“…Several causes could account for the discrepancies in the location and direction of our findings and those of Elmer and colleagues. First, different measures were examined in the two studies (thickness here and volume in the previous study), and the direction of the relationship between brain anatomy and language skill can differ depending on which specific morphometric measure is being examined (García-Pentón, et al, 2015;Roehrich-Gascon, Small, & Tremblay, 2015). Second, the participants in the present study had far less experience than those tested by Elmer and colleagues;those presented here had just finished their simultaneous interpretation training, whereas those tested by Elmer et al were established professionals who had practiced their skills for years before participation in the brain imaging studies (Elmer, et al, 2014;Elmer, et al, 2011).…”

“…Although these two types of interpretinghave overlapping features, especially with regards to the multilingual language comprehension and production demands, the absence of simultaneity in consecutive interpreting renders it a categorically different task since it does not require the same degree of online language control as does SI. It does however, have other demands, and we cannot rule out that these could have contributed to some changes we observe here.More generally, although many studies that examined brain structure in relation to language-related training have shown increases in grey or white matter volume (Golestani, et al, 2011;Klein, et al, 2014;Li, et al, 2014;Mechelli, et al, 2004;Ressel, et al, 2012;Stein, et al, 2012) or connectivity (García-Pentón, et al, 2014;Vandermosten, et al, 2015) related to training, others have shown differences in the opposite direction (Golestani, 2014;Marie & Golestani, In Press;Olulade, et al, 2015;Porter, Collins, Muetzel, Lim, & Luciana, 2011;Roehrich-Gascon, et al, 2015), again, possibly reflecting experience-dependent pruning or neural reorganisation. Nonetheless, the results reported here point to traininginduced cortical thickening.…”

Sexual dimorphism of Broca's region: More gray matter in female brains in Brodmann areas 44 and 45

“…This, in turn, would be in strong agreement with the aforementioned language-related superiority in females (Bauer et al 2002; Benton and Hamsher 1976; Halpern 1992; Kimura 1999; Lutchmaya et al 2002; Morisset et al 1995; Murray et al 1990; Roulstone et al 2002; Spreen and Strauss 1991). In fact, various studies have reported an association between gray matter volume and verbal fluency as well as successful verbal memory strategies (Kirchhoff et al 2014; Newman et al 2007; Roehrich-Gascon et al 2015). However, since no language measures (or micro-anatomical data) have been obtained for the current sample, this proposal remains merely conjecture.…”