Where, When and Why Brain Activation Differs for Bilinguals and Monolinguals during Picture Naming and Reading Aloud
Open accessAbstract
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that when bilinguals named pictures or read words aloud, in their native or nonnative language, activation was higher relative to monolinguals in 5 left hemisphere regions: dorsal precentral gyrus, pars triangularis, pars opercularis, superior temporal gyrus, and planum temporale. We further demonstrate that these areas are sensitive to increasing demands on speech production in monolinguals. This suggests that the advantage of being bilingual comes at the expense of increased work in brain areas that support monolingual word processing. By comparing the effect of bilingualism across a range of tasks, we argue that activation is higher in bilinguals compared with monolinguals because word retrieval is more demanding; articulation of each word is less rehearsed; and speech output needs careful monitoring to avoid errors when competition for word selection occurs between, as well as within, language.
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- Authors
- Parker Jones, O., Green, D. W., Grogan, A., Pliatsikas, C., Filippopolitis, K., Ali, N., Lee, H. L., Ramsden, S., Gazarian, K., Prejawa, S., Seghier, M. L., & Price, C. J.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- University of Sheffield (GB)
- University of Reading (GB)
- Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging (GB)
- Anglia Ruskin University (GB)
- Max Planck Society (DE)
- Venue
- Cerebral Cortex
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2011-06-24
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 892-902
- ISSN
- 1047-3211 (ISSN-L)
- 1460-2199
- PMC
- PMC3306575
- OpenAlex
- W2095776796
- Cited by
- 221
- References
- 63
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 47 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 27 · 2014: 18 · 2013: 15 · 2012: 15
- FWCI
- 8.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc
- Locations
- Cerebral Cortex (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- CentAUR (University of Reading) (submittedVersion)
- Kent Academic Repository (University of Kent) (submittedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion)
- Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Keywords
- bilingualism, picture naming, reading aloud, word retrieval, speech production, left hemisphere activation, pars triangularis, pars opercularis, superior temporal gyrus, planum temporale, bilingual advantage
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Brain, Brain Mapping, Female, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Middle Aged, Names, Oxygen, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Photic Stimulation, Predictive Value of Tests, Psycholinguistics, Reaction Time, Reading, Speech Perception, Multilingualism, Young Adult
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