Cognitively demanding experiences, including complex skills acquisition and processing, have been shown to induce brain adaptations, at least at the macroscopic level, e.g. on brain volume and/or functional connectivity. However, the neurobiological bases of these adaptations, including at the microstructural cellular level, remain poorly understood. Here we use bilingualism as a case study to investigate the microscopic correlates of experience-based brain adaptations. We employ Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy to measure concentrations of metabolites in the ventral striatum, a region critical to language control which is reshaped by bilingualism. Our results revealed increased concentration of myo-Inositol in bilinguals compared to monolinguals. This metabolite is linked to synaptic pruning, a process underlying experience-based brain restructuring. Crucially, concentration was predicted by relative amount of bilingual engagement. Our results suggest that (degree of) long-term cognitive experiences have measurable effects at the microcellular level, which might accompany, if not drive, the observed macroscopic brain adaptations.
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