Enhanced efficiency in the bilingual brain through the inter-hemispheric cortico-cerebellar pathway in early second language acquisition
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The bilingual experience has a profound impact on the functional and structural organization of the brain, but it is not yet well known how this experience influences whole-brain functional network connectivity. We examined a well-characterized large sample (151 participants) of monolinguals and bilinguals with varied age of second language acquisition, who underwent resting-state functional magnetic brain imaging. We constructed comprehensive functional brain networks for each participant, encompassing cortical, subcortical, and cerebellar regions of interest. Whole-brain analyses revealed that bilingual individuals exhibit higher global efficiency than monolinguals, indicating enhanced functional integration in the brain. Moreover, the age at which the second language was acquired correlated with this increased efficiency, suggesting that earlier exposure to a second language has lasting positive effects on brain functional organization. Further investigation through the network-based statistics (NBS) approach indicates that this effect is primarily driven by heightened functional connectivity between association networks and the cerebellum. This work shows that early learning enhances global whole-brain efficiency and that the timing of learning of two languages has an impact on functional brain organization. Significance statement Long-term learning impacts brain organization at different spatial scales, and this may be particularly enhanced during early stages of life. Bilingualism offers a unique opportunity to test long-term learning effects in the human brain, given that exposure to a second language can occur from birth or later in life, and can be maintained over long periods of time. We found that second language acquisition in early childhood (before five years of age) enhances brain network efficiency, and that this effect goes beyond the language and cognitive control regions, in fact, the interhemispheric cortico-cerebellar circuit plays a key role. This work shows that the timing of bilingual learning experience alters the brain functional organization at the global and local levels.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".