Lee, H.-L.;
Devlin, J.T.;
Shakeshaft, C.;
Stewart, L.H.;
Brennan, A.;
Glensman, J.;
Pitcher, K.;
... Price, C.J.; + view all
(2007)
Anatomical traces of vocabulary acquisition in the adolescent brain.
Journal of Neuroscience
, 27
(5)
pp. 1184-1189.
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4442-06.2007.
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Abstract
A surprising discovery in recent years is that the structure of the adult human brain changes when a new cognitive or motor skill is learned. This effect is seen as a change in local gray or white matter density that correlates with behavioral measures. Critically, however, the cognitive and anatomical mechanisms underlying these learning-related structural brain changes remain unknown. Here, we combined brain imaging, detailed behavioral analyses, and white matter tractography in English-speaking monolingual adolescents to show that a critical linguistic prerequisite (namely, knowledge of vocabulary) is proportionately related to relative gray matter density in bilateral posterior supramarginal gyri. The effect was specific to the number of words learned, regardless of verbal fluency or other cognitive abilities. The identified region was found to have direct connections to other inferior parietal areas that separately process either the sounds of words or their meanings, suggesting that the posterior supramarginal gyrus plays a role in linking the basic components of vocabulary knowledge. Together, these analyses highlight the cognitive and anatomical mechanisms that mediate an essential language skill.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Anatomical traces of vocabulary acquisition in the adolescent brain |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4442-06.2007 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4442-06.2007 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The license allows you to copy, distribute, and transmit the work, as well as adapting it. However, you must attribute the work to the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work), and cannot use the work for commercial purposes without prior permission of the author. If you alter or build upon this work, you can distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. |
| Keywords: | Llanguage, parietal, connectivity, structure, development, imaging |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Imaging Neuroscience |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/11653 |
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