Zhang Jia, Li Hehui, Zhang Manli, Wang Zhengke, Ao Xiya, Jian Jie, Wei Na, Liu Haiyi, Ding Guosheng, Meng Xiangzhi
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
Center for Brain Disorders and Cognitive Sciences, School of Psychology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China.
Neuroimage. 2023 Apr 15;270:119989. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.119989. Epub 2023 Feb 27.
Additional neural substance for reading in a second language has been reported by prior studies. However, to date, there has been little investigation into whether and how the brain's adaptation to a second language is induced by specific linguistic tasks or is a general effect during reading in a new language. To address this issue, our study investigated Chinese children learning English as a second language by combining cross-sectional and longitudinal Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies. We compared brain activation across four reading tasks, orthographic tasks and phonological tasks in Chinese (the first language, L1) and English (the second language, L2). By comparing the activation pattern across languages, we observed greater activation in the left inferior parietal lobule (LIPL) in English compared to Chinese, suggesting a functional preference of the LIPL to L2. In addition, greater correlation between LIPL-related FC and L2 was mainly observed in the phonological task, indicating that LIPL could be associated with phonological processing. Moreover, a proportion of the children were enrolled in an 8-week phonological-based reading-training program. We observed significant functional plasticity of the LIPL elicited by this training program only in the English phonological task and not in the orthographic task, further substantiating that the additional requirements of the LIPL in L2 are mainly associated with phonological processing. The findings provide new insights into understanding the functional contribution of the LIPL to reading in a second language.
先前的研究报告了用于第二语言阅读的额外神经物质。然而，迄今为止，对于大脑对第二语言的适应是由特定语言任务诱导的，还是在学习新语言阅读过程中的一种普遍效应，几乎没有进行过研究。为了解决这个问题，我们的研究通过结合横断面和纵向功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究，对学习英语作为第二语言的中国儿童进行了调查。我们比较了在中文（第一语言，L1）和英文（第二语言，L2）的四种阅读任务、正字法任务和语音任务中的大脑激活情况。通过比较不同语言的激活模式，我们观察到与中文相比，英文在左侧顶下小叶（LIPL）有更强的激活，这表明LIPL对L2有功能偏好。此外，主要在语音任务中观察到LIPL相关功能连接（FC）与L2之间有更强的相关性，这表明LIPL可能与语音处理有关。此外，一部分儿童参加了为期8周的基于语音的阅读训练项目。我们观察到，只有在英语语音任务中，而不是在正字法任务中，这个训练项目引发了LIPL显著的功能可塑性，这进一步证实了L2中LIPL的额外需求主要与语音处理有关。这些发现为理解LIPL对第二语言阅读的功能贡献提供了新的见解。
