The Small and Efficient Language Network of Polyglots and Hyper-polyglots
Author(s)
Jouravlev, Olessia; Mineroff, Zachary A; Blank, Idan Asher; Fedorenko, Evelina G
DownloadSubmitted version (828.1Kb)
Open Access Policy
Open Access Policy
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Terms of use
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
© 2020 The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. Acquiring a foreign language is challenging for many adults. Yet certain individuals choose to acquire sometimes dozens of languages and often just for fun. Is there something special about the minds and brains of such polyglots? Using robust individual-level markers of language activity, measured with fMRI, we compared native language processing in polyglots versus matched controls. Polyglots (n = 17, including nine "hyper-polyglots"with proficiency in 10-55 languages) used fewer neural resources to process language: Their activations were smaller in both magnitude and extent. This difference was spatially and functionally selective: The groups were similar in their activation of two other brain networks - the multiple demand network and the default mode network. We hypothesize that the activation reduction in the language network is experientially driven, such that the acquisition and use of multiple languages makes language processing generally more efficient. However, genetic and longitudinal studies will be critical to distinguish this hypothesis from the one whereby polyglots' brains already differ at birth or early in development. This initial characterization of polyglots' language network opens the door to future investigations of the cognitive and neural architecture of individuals who gain mastery of multiple languages, including changes in this architecture with linguistic experiences.
Date issued
2021Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences; McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MITJournal
Cerebral Cortex
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Citation
Jouravlev, Olessia, Mineroff, Zachary, Blank, Idan A and Fedorenko, Evelina. 2021. "The Small and Efficient Language Network of Polyglots and Hyper-polyglots." Cerebral Cortex, 31 (1).
Version: Original manuscript