De Baene Wouter, Duyck Wouter, Brass Marcel, Carreiras Manuel
Ghent University.
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2015 Sep;27(9):1752-65. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_00817. Epub 2015 Apr 22.
Controlling multiple languages during speech production is believed to rely on functional mechanisms that are (at least partly) shared with domain-general cognitive control in early, highly proficient bilinguals. Recent neuroimaging results have indeed suggested a certain degree of neural overlap between language control and nonverbal cognitive control in bilinguals. However, this evidence is only indirect. Direct evidence for neural overlap between language control and nonverbal cognitive control can only be provided if two prerequisites are met: Language control and nonverbal cognitive control should be compared within the same participants, and the task requirements of both conditions should be closely matched. To provide such direct evidence for the first time, we used fMRI to examine the overlap in brain activation between switch-specific activity in a linguistic switching task and a closely matched nonlinguistic switching task, within participants, in early, highly proficient Spanish-Basque bilinguals. The current findings provide direct evidence that, in these bilinguals, highly similar brain circuits are involved in language control and domain-general cognitive control.
在言语产生过程中控制多种语言被认为依赖于功能性机制，这些机制在早期高度熟练的双语者中（至少部分地）与领域通用认知控制共享。最近的神经成像结果确实表明双语者的语言控制和非语言认知控制之间存在一定程度的神经重叠。然而，这一证据只是间接的。只有满足两个先决条件，才能提供语言控制和非语言认知控制之间神经重叠的直接证据：应在同一参与者内比较语言控制和非语言认知控制，并且两种条件的任务要求应紧密匹配。为了首次提供这种直接证据，我们使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）来检查早期高度熟练的西班牙语 - 巴斯克语双语者在语言切换任务中的特定切换活动与紧密匹配的非语言切换任务之间在参与者内的大脑激活重叠。目前的研究结果提供了直接证据，表明在这些双语者中，高度相似的脑回路参与语言控制和领域通用认知控制。
