Early but discontinued exposure to a language exerts lasting effects on white matter architecture in the brain
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Language experiences influence later cognitive development, but how they shape brain organization remains unclear. We investigated four groups of participants who differed in their early linguistic environments: International Adoptees (IA) from China, who discontinued their first language (L1) Mandarin in the first two years of life and only speak French since adoption; L1-Mandarin speakers with early acquisition and continued use of French; L1-French speakers; and English-French bilinguals. We used diffusion-weighted imaging to explore group differences in two white-matter tracts in the brain that play a role in language processing, the arcuate fasciculus and superior longitudinal fasciculus. Our findings revealed that despite discontinuing Mandarin early in life, IA participants exhibited structural features resembling those of native Mandarin speakers, including smaller tract volumes in the left hemisphere and more balanced tract volumes across hemispheres. In contrast, English-French bilingual and L1-French groups exhibited similar white-matter characteristics, which were distinct from the two tone-language exposed groups, suggesting a structural organization specific to tonal language experience, and not bilingualism in general.
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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) | 0.001 | 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".