Are nonlinguistic functions in “Broca’s area” prerequisites for language acquisition? FMRI findings from an ontogenetic viewpoint

Müller, Ralph‐Axel; Basho, Surina

doi:10.1016/s0093-934x(03)00346-8

Cited by 52 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…For the first goal, it was hypothesized that the left inferior frontal cortex (Broca's area) known to be involved in native language syntactic processing would also be engaged for SLA. Broca's area (Brodmann's area [BA] 44 and BA 45) has been implicated in L1 syntactic processing by both lesion (Grodinsky, Pinango, Zurif, & Drai, 1999;Caramazza & Zurif, 1976) and imaging data (Muller and Basho, 2004;Musso et al, 2003;Sakai, Homae, & Hashimoto, 2003;Hashimoto & Sakai, 2002;Sakai, Noguchi, Takeuchi, & Watanabe, 2002;Grezes & Decety, 2001;Caplan, Alpert, Waters, & Oliviera, 2000;Caplan, Alpert, & Waters, 1999;Stromswold, Caplan, Alpert, & Rauch, 1996). Only recently has the role of Broca's area in the language acquisition process become the focus of brain imaging experiments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anatomical Substrates of Visual and Auditory Miniature Second-language Learning

Newman‐Norlund

Frey

Petitto

et al. 2006

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Longitudinal changes in brain activity during second language (L2) acquisition of a miniature finitestate grammar, named Wernickese, were identified with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants learned either a visual sign language form or an auditory-verbal form to equivalent proficiency levels. Brain activity during sentence comprehension while hearing/viewing stimuli was assessed at low, medium, and high levels of proficiency in three separate fMRI sessions. Activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's area) correlated positively with improving L2 proficiency, whereas activity in the right-hemisphere (RH) homologue was negatively correlated for both auditory and visual forms of the language. Activity in sequence learning areas including the premotor cortex and putamen also correlated with L2 proficiency. Modality-specific differences in the blood oxygenation level-dependent signal accompanying L2 acquisition were localized to the planum temporale (PT). Participants learning the auditory form exhibited decreasing reliance on bilateral PT sites across sessions. In the visual form, bilateral PT sites increased in activity between Session 1 and Session 2, then decreased in left PT activity from Session 2 to Session 3. Comparison of L2 laterality (as compared to L1 laterality) in auditory and visual groups failed to demonstrate greater RH lateralization for the visual versus auditory L2. These data establish a common role for Broca's area in language acquisition irrespective of the perceptual form of the language and suggest that L2s are processed similar to first languages even when learned after the ''critical period.'' The right frontal cortex was not preferentially recruited by visual language after accounting for phonetic/ structural complexity and performance.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anatomical Substrates of Visual and Auditory Miniature Second-language Learning

Newman‐Norlund

Frey

Petitto

et al. 2006

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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“…Recent studies, though, suggest that this cortical region may also be involved in other nonmotor aspects of language processing involving computational and semantic analyses. For instance, human functional imaging studies have demonstrated that this region is activated during semantic processing and syntactic working memory (Amunts et al, 2004;Fiebach, Schlesewsky, Lohmann, Von Cramon, & Friederici, 2004;Muller & Basho, 2004;Price, 1998;Demb et al, 1995). The vPFC has also been implicated in the maintenance and retrieval of abstract rules (Bunge, Kahn, Wallis, Miller, & Wagner, 2003) and the prefrontal cortex, in general, plays an important role in categorization (Reber et al, 2003;Strange et al, 2000).…”

Section: The Role Of the Vpfc In Vocalization And Language Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Neurophysiology of Functionally Meaningful Categories: Macaque Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Plays a Critical Role in Spontaneous Categorization of Species-Specific Vocalizations

Gifford

MacLean

Hauser

et al. 2005

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

112

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What is presently unclear is whether this cortical area also plays a role in spontaneous recognition and discrimination of natural categories. Here, we explore this possibility by recording from neurons in the PFC while rhesus listen to species-specific vocalizations that vary in terms of their social function and acoustic morphology. We found that ventral prefrontal cortex (vPFC) activity, on average, did not differentiate between food calls that were associated with the same functional category, despite having different acoustic properties. In contrast, vPFC activity differentiated between food calls associated with different functional classes and specifically, information about the quality and motivational value of the food. These results suggest that the vPFC is involved in the categorization of socially meaningful signals, thereby both extending its previously conceived role in the acquisition of learned categories and showing the significance of using natural categorical distinctions in the study of neural mechanisms. &

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“…Inferior frontal and parietal cortex show large overlap in the n-back and verb generation tasks, an indication of shared circuitry during phonological retrieval, semantic decision and working memory tasks (Muller and Basho, 2004). Table 4 summarizes the activation results from one run and from two runs for each of the tasks in the targeted areas.…”

Section: Variability Of Individual Activation Center Locationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A rapid fMRI task battery for mapping of visual, motor, cognitive, and emotional function

2006

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A set of sensory, motor, cognitive and emotional tasks were combined in a simple, rapid-presentation task battery and tested on a group of 31, normal, healthy subjects aged 22 to 76. Five tasks were selected on the basis of widespread use in fMRI and their ability to produce robust and reliable regional activations. They were: 1) a visual task designed to activate the occipital cortex; 2) a bimanual motor task designed to activate motor areas; 3) a verb generation task designed to activate speech processing areas; 4) an n-back task designed to activate areas associated with working memory and executive function; and 5) an emotional pictures task designed to provoke strong emotional responses that typically activate limbic structures. Most of the tasks produced reliable activations in individual subjects, and assessments of the distribution and reliability of individual subject activations in each targeted area are provided. The emotional pictures task did not demonstrate adequate sensitivity in a priori target regions, only in the a posteriori defined inferior temporal region. Age and gender specific differences were found in the activation patterns for both the cognitive and emotional tasks. The battery provides a prescribed means for researchers to obtain reliable functional localizers within 20-25 minutes of scanning, which can be used to support more elaborate mapping studies of brain function. The dataset can also serve as reliability metric for new fMRI labs and novice investigators seeking to test their acquisition and analysis techniques with minimal time investment and expense.

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Are nonlinguistic functions in “Broca’s area” prerequisites for language acquisition? FMRI findings from an ontogenetic viewpoint

Cited by 52 publications

References 51 publications

Anatomical Substrates of Visual and Auditory Miniature Second-language Learning

Anatomical Substrates of Visual and Auditory Miniature Second-language Learning

The Neurophysiology of Functionally Meaningful Categories: Macaque Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Plays a Critical Role in Spontaneous Categorization of Species-Specific Vocalizations

A rapid fMRI task battery for mapping of visual, motor, cognitive, and emotional function

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