Functional preference of the left inferior parietal lobule to second language reading
Jia Zhang,
Hehui Li,
Manli Zhang,
Zhengke Wang,
Xiya Ao,
Jie Jian,
Na Wei,
Haiyi Liu,
Guosheng Ding,
Xiangzhi Meng
Affiliations
Jia Zhang
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Hehui Li
Center for Brain Disorders and Cognitive Sciences, School of Psychology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China
Manli Zhang
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavioral and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China; Human Communication, Development, and Information Sciences, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Zhengke Wang
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavioral and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Xiya Ao
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavioral and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Jie Jian
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavioral and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Na Wei
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Haiyi Liu
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Guosheng Ding
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Xiangzhi Meng
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavioral and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China; PekingU-PolyU Center for Child Development and Learning, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China; Corresponding author.
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.
