Multilingualism in Prefrontal Cortex

Multilingualism in Prefrontal Cortex Activity when Confronted by Nonsensical Speech Patterns Introduction Background Bilinguals activate distinct areas of their brain while processing language Distinction rolles on degree of difference between languages spoken Languages with the same alphabet (cx English and French) won't activate distinct cortical areas while languages with different lexical morphologies (ex English and Chinese) wil Figure 2 Prefrontal Cortex activity in brüngual while performing touk Latter group exhibits bilateral activation when reading pseudowords while former does not Objective Determine whether activity in the prefrontal cortex differs between monolinguals and polyglots when instructed to produce nonsensical speech pattorn Methods Measures Participants instructed to speak and sing random words and pseudowords (Tasks 7,9,11,14,16, 18) INTRS headband measured Blood Oxygen Level Depondent (BOLD) activity in 8 areas of the prefrontal cortex Figure Lat of Tasks compiuted by subjects Results Conclusions Discussion No significant difference in total amount of brain activity between monolinguals and bilinguals Executive function in young adults is at its peak, explaining th absence of variation in total bra activity Substantial margins of error in bilingual group denotes that brain activation could vary depending on the language an individual spoke besides Englis Limitations Language status was not a significant predictor of total brain activity while speaking and singing nonsensical speech patterns F(6,15)-10683a, p-0-429, Pillais Trace-0313, partial 2 313 Figure le mean activity between groupe in task 2 (b) mean actinity betiveron groups i EUR 3 Octivity between groups in mean actrity between groups in task 14, le mean activity Deweer grot in task ( mean activity between groups in task 18 Small sample size of both groups could have led to insignificant resum Bilinguals' language spoken hesidena English unknown Future Directions Performing similar experiment in a larger sample of young adults spoken Controlling for second language Monitoring seperate regions rather than total brain activity Participants 16 English monolinguals and 5 tsilinguals Figure 2 regions metured in the prefpotur corte Data Analysis Raw-data processed through NIRSIT to retrieve graphs One-way MANOVA through SPSS A