Dept. of Psicología Básica, Clínica y Psicobiología, Universitat Jaume I, Av Sos Baynat sn, 12071 Castelló de la Plana, Spain.
Brain Lang. 2011 Dec;119(3):129-35. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2011.03.011. Epub 2011 May 7.
The left inferior frontal cortex, the caudate and the anterior cingulate have been proposed as the neural origin of language switching, but most of the studies were conducted in low proficient bilinguals. In the present study, we investigated brain areas involved in language switching in a sample of 19 early, high-proficient Spanish-Catalan bilinguals using a picture naming task that allowed contrasting switch and non-switch trials. Compared to the non-switching condition, language switching elicited greater activation in the head of the left caudate and the pre-SMA/ACC. When the direction of the switching was considered, the left caudate was more associated with forward switching and the pre-SMA/ACC with backward switching. The discussion is focused on the relevance of these brain structures in language control in early, high-proficient bilinguals, and the comparison with previous results in late bilinguals.
左额下回、尾状核和前扣带回被认为是语言转换的神经起源，但大多数研究都是在低熟练度的双语者中进行的。在本研究中，我们使用图片命名任务调查了 19 名早期、高熟练度的西班牙语-加泰罗尼亚双语者在语言转换过程中涉及的大脑区域，该任务允许对比转换和非转换试验。与非转换条件相比，语言转换在左尾状核头部和 SMA/ACC 前区引起了更大的激活。当考虑转换的方向时，左尾状核与向前转换更相关，而 SMA/ACC 与向后转换更相关。讨论的重点是这些大脑结构在早期、高熟练度双语者语言控制中的相关性，并与晚期双语者的先前结果进行了比较。
