Language Exposure Relates to Structural Neural Connectivity in Childhood
Neuroscience research has elucidated broad relationships between socioeconomic status (SES) and young children’s brain structure, but there is little mechanistic knowledge about specific environmental factors that are associated with specific variation in brain structure. One environmental factor, e...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Society for Neuroscience
2020
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/126658 |
| _version_ | 1826213566616698880 |
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| author | Romeo, Rachel R Segaran, Joshua R. Leonard, Julia Anne Robinson, Sydney T. West, Martin R. Mackey, Allyson Yendiki, Anastasia Rowe, Meredith L. Gabrieli, John D. E. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Romeo, Rachel R Segaran, Joshua R. Leonard, Julia Anne Robinson, Sydney T. West, Martin R. Mackey, Allyson Yendiki, Anastasia Rowe, Meredith L. Gabrieli, John D. E. |
| author_sort | Romeo, Rachel R |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Neuroscience research has elucidated broad relationships between socioeconomic status (SES) and young children’s brain structure, but there is little mechanistic knowledge about specific environmental factors that are associated with specific variation in brain structure. One environmental factor, early language exposure, predicts children’s linguistic and cognitive skills and later academic achievement, but how language exposure relates to neuroanatomy is unknown. By measuring the real-world language exposure of young children (ages 4 – 6 years, 27 male/13 female), we confirmed the preregistered hypothesis that greater adult-child conversational experience, independent of SES and the sheer amount of adult speech, is related to stronger, more coherent white matter connectivity in the left arcuate and superior longitudinal fasciculi on average, and specifically near their anterior termination at Broca’s area in left inferior frontal cortex. Fractional anisotropy of significant tract subregions mediated the relationship between conversational turns and children’s language skills and indicated a neuroanatomical mechanism underlying the SES “language gap.” Post hoc whole-brain analyses revealed that language exposure was not related to any other white matter tracts, indicating the specificity of this relationship. Results suggest that the development of dorsal language tracts is environmentally influenced, specifically by early, dialogic interaction. Furthermore, these findings raise the possibility that early intervention programs aiming to ameliorate disadvantages in development due to family SES may focus on increasing children’s conversational exposure to capitalize on the early neural plasticity underlying cognitive development. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:51:17Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/126658 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:51:17Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publisher | Society for Neuroscience |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1266582022-10-02T04:39:00Z Language Exposure Relates to Structural Neural Connectivity in Childhood Romeo, Rachel R Segaran, Joshua R. Leonard, Julia Anne Robinson, Sydney T. West, Martin R. Mackey, Allyson Yendiki, Anastasia Rowe, Meredith L. Gabrieli, John D. E. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT Neuroscience research has elucidated broad relationships between socioeconomic status (SES) and young children’s brain structure, but there is little mechanistic knowledge about specific environmental factors that are associated with specific variation in brain structure. One environmental factor, early language exposure, predicts children’s linguistic and cognitive skills and later academic achievement, but how language exposure relates to neuroanatomy is unknown. By measuring the real-world language exposure of young children (ages 4 – 6 years, 27 male/13 female), we confirmed the preregistered hypothesis that greater adult-child conversational experience, independent of SES and the sheer amount of adult speech, is related to stronger, more coherent white matter connectivity in the left arcuate and superior longitudinal fasciculi on average, and specifically near their anterior termination at Broca’s area in left inferior frontal cortex. Fractional anisotropy of significant tract subregions mediated the relationship between conversational turns and children’s language skills and indicated a neuroanatomical mechanism underlying the SES “language gap.” Post hoc whole-brain analyses revealed that language exposure was not related to any other white matter tracts, indicating the specificity of this relationship. Results suggest that the development of dorsal language tracts is environmentally influenced, specifically by early, dialogic interaction. Furthermore, these findings raise the possibility that early intervention programs aiming to ameliorate disadvantages in development due to family SES may focus on increasing children’s conversational exposure to capitalize on the early neural plasticity underlying cognitive development. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Grant F31HD086957) 2020-08-18T20:34:04Z 2020-08-18T20:34:04Z 2018-08 2018-07 2019-10-01T14:19:29Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0270-6474 1529-2401 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/126658 Romeo, Rachel R. et al. "Language Exposure Relates to Structural Neural Connectivity in Childhood." Journal of Neuroscience 38, 36 (August 2018): 7870-7877 © 2018 The Author(s) en http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.0484-18.2018 Journal of Neuroscience Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Society for Neuroscience Society for Neurocience |
| spellingShingle | Romeo, Rachel R Segaran, Joshua R. Leonard, Julia Anne Robinson, Sydney T. West, Martin R. Mackey, Allyson Yendiki, Anastasia Rowe, Meredith L. Gabrieli, John D. E. Language Exposure Relates to Structural Neural Connectivity in Childhood |
| title | Language Exposure Relates to Structural Neural Connectivity in Childhood |
| title_full | Language Exposure Relates to Structural Neural Connectivity in Childhood |
| title_fullStr | Language Exposure Relates to Structural Neural Connectivity in Childhood |
| title_full_unstemmed | Language Exposure Relates to Structural Neural Connectivity in Childhood |
| title_short | Language Exposure Relates to Structural Neural Connectivity in Childhood |
| title_sort | language exposure relates to structural neural connectivity in childhood |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/126658 |
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