Emerging research has provided valuable insights into the structural characteristics of the bilingual brain from studies of bilingual adults; however, there is a dearth of evidence examining brain ...structural alterations in childhood associated with the bilingual experience. This study examined the associations between bilingualism and white matter organization in bilingual children compared to monolingual peers leveraging the large‐scale data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. Then, 446 bilingual children (ages 9–10) were identified from the participants in the ABCD data and rigorously matched to a group of 446 monolingual peers. Multiple regression models for selected language and cognitive control white matter pathways were used to compare white matter fractional anisotropy (FA) values between bilinguals and monolinguals, controlling for demographic and environmental factors as covariates in the models. Results revealed significantly lower FA values in bilinguals compared to monolinguals across established dorsal and ventral language network pathways bilaterally (i.e., the superior longitudinal fasciculus and inferior frontal‐occipital fasciculus) and right‐hemispheric pathways in areas related to cognitive control and short‐term memory (i.e., cingulum and parahippocampal cingulum). In contrast to the enhanced FA values observed in adult bilinguals relative to monolinguals, our findings of lower FA in bilingual children relative to monolinguals may suggest a protracted development of white matter pathways associated with language and cognitive control resulting from dual language learning in childhood. Further, these findings underscore the need for large‐scale longitudinal investigation of white matter development in bilingual children to understand neuroplasticity associated with the bilingual experience during this period of heightened language learning.
The present study found lower fractional anisotropy in bilingual children relative to monolinguals in white matter pathways associated with language and cognitive control leveraging a large‐scale dataset. Findings may suggest a protracted development of white matter pathways associated with bilingual experience in development.
There is a growing body of evidence based on adult neuroimaging that suggests that the brain adapts to bilingual experiences to support language proficiency. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive ...Development (ABCD) Study is a useful source of data for evaluating this claim during childhood, as it involves data from a large sample of American children. Using the baseline ABCD Study data collected at ages nine and ten, the goal of this study was to identify differences in cortical thickness between bilinguals and monolinguals and to evaluate how variability in English vocabulary and English use within bilinguals might explain these group differences. We identified bilingual participants as children who spoke a non-English language and were exposed to the non-English language at home. We then identified a matched sample of English monolingual participants based on age, sex, pubertal status, parent education, household income, non-verbal IQ, and handedness. Bilinguals had thinner cortex than monolinguals in widespread cortical regions. Within bilinguals, more English use was associated with greater frontal and parietal cortical thickness; greater English vocabulary was associated with greater frontal and temporal cortical thickness. These findings replicate and extend previous research with bilingual children and highlight unexplained cortical thickness differences between bilinguals and monolinguals.
Although researchers generally agree that a certain set of brain areas underlie bilingual language processing, there is discrepancy regarding what effect timing of language acquisition has on these ...regions. We aimed to investigate the neuroanatomical correlates of age of acquisition (AoA), which has been examined previously, but with inconsistent results, likely influenced by methodological differences across studies. We analyzed gray matter density, volume, and thickness using whole‐brain linear models in 334 bilinguals and monolinguals. Neuroanatomical correlates of AoA differed depending on gray matter metric. Relative to early bilinguals, late bilinguals had thicker cortex in language processing and cognitive control regions, and greater density in multiple frontal areas and the right middle temporal and supramarginal gyri. Early bilinguals had greater volume than late bilinguals in the left middle temporal gyrus. Overall, volume was the least sensitive to AoA‐related differences. Multiple regions not classically implicated in dual‐language processing were also found, which highlights the important role of whole‐brain analyses in neuroscience. This is the first study to investigate AoA and gray matter thickness, volume, and density all in the same sample. We conclude that cognitive models of bilingualism should consider the roles of development and neuroanatomical metric in driving our understanding of bilingual and monolingual language organization.
Spotted wing drosophila,
Drosophila suzukii
, is a devastating invasive pest of small and stone fruits in the Americas and Europe. To better understand the population dynamics of
D. suzukii
, we ...reviewed recent work on juvenile development, adult reproduction, and seasonal variation in life history parameters including the abiotic/biotic factors that influence these processes. Juvenile development is optimal at moderately warm temperatures, and larvae exhibit some immunity to parasitism. Adults use visual cues and substrate-borne vibrations for courtship and exhibit a bimodal locomotor activity pattern (except mated females). Under 20–27 °C and various conditions, development from egg to adult can take 10–17 days, females first lay eggs within 1–8 days and their lifetime fecundity varies from <100 to >400. Oviposition is consistently high in raspberry hosts and fruits with lower penetration force, and the presence of
Wolbachia
endosymbionts can lower fertility.
Drosophila suzukii
exhibit seasonal variation with a darker winter morph that is more cold tolerant. Also,
D. suzukii
likely undergo reproductive diapause in the fall, with colder temperatures and shorter day lengths influencing reproduction. To develop viable IPM programs for
D. suzukii,
knowledge of abiotic and biotic conditions that impact
D. suzukii
life history parameters and population dynamics is critical, and gaps in the current knowledge are discussed.
The COVID-19 pandemic impacted early childhood programs serving infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in dramatic ways. After temporarily closing, many educators quickly adapted their procedures to ...ensure children’s safety as they reopened to provide childcare for essential workers and then the community at large. This manuscript reports on statewide efforts to continue quality improvement initiatives for early childhood programs amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. We first describe the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic for over 2000 educators—teachers, administrators, and specialists—who completed surveys in the Spring and Fall of 2020. These survey data come from a statewide system called the Texas Early Childhood Professional Development System (TECPDS), designed to track the professional development needs/progress of early childhood educators. Second, we describe an example of how a statewide professional development and quality improvement program shifted to remote delivery during the pandemic. As an increasing number of educators turn to virtual training resources, we explain lessons learned from these response efforts and how they can inform future virtual professional development efforts, even amidst crisis, to ensure that a focus on quality improvement continues while supporting teachers’ individual needs.
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•Does parietal GMV predict Simon task performance for bilinguals and monolinguals?•Language group & GMV in right supramarginal gyri interact for congruent trials.•Right supramarginal ...GMV & RT related negatively in bilinguals; positively in monolinguals.•Different role of right IPL in bilingual and monolingual attentional control.
Research suggests that bilingualism is associated with increases in parietal gray matter volume (GMV). These parietal GMV increases are a source of variability that may help explain the reported bilingual/monolingual differences in attentional control. The current study examined how parietal GMV variability and a participant's language background predicted Simon task performance. GMV measures were extracted from the bilateral angular and supramarginal gyri from participants’ MRI scans using Freesurfer image analysis suite. Contrary to expectations, bilinguals did not outperform monolinguals on the Simon task. In fact, bilinguals had slower response times across all conditions of the task (incongruent, congruent, and neutral) than monolinguals. In addition, GMV in the right supramarginal gyrus was negatively associated with response times for congruent trials for bilinguals, and positively associated with these response times for monolinguals. The difference in the relationships between parietal GMV and task performance suggests that bilinguals rely on spatial attention to complete the Simon task, while monolinguals may rely on verbal attention. These results help to connect bilingual advantages in tasks requiring spatial attention (e.g., attentional control) with bilingual disadvantages in tasks requiring verbal attention (e.g., verbal fluency).
Research suggests that bilingual children experience an extension or delay in the closing of the sensitive/critical period of language development due to multiple language exposure. Moreover, ...bilingual experience may impact the development of subcortical regions, although these conclusions are drawn from research with adults, as there is a scarcity of research during late childhood and early adolescence. The current study included 1215 bilingual and 5894 monolingual children from the ABCD Study to examine the relationship between subcortical volume and English vocabulary in heritage Spanish bilingual and English monolingual children, as well as volumetric differences between the language groups. We also examined the unique effects of language usage in bilingual children's subcortical volumes. In general, bilingual children had less cerebellar volume and greater volume in the putamen, thalamus, and globus pallidus than monolingual children. English vocabulary was positively related to volume in the cerebellum, thalamus, caudate, putamen, nucleus accumbens, and right pallidum in all children. Moreover, the positive relationship between vocabulary and volume in the nucleus accumbens was stronger for monolingual adolescents than bilingual adolescents. The results are somewhat in line with existing literature on the dynamic volume adaptation of subcortical brain regions due to bilingual development and experience. Future research is needed to further explore these regions longitudinally across development to examine structural changes in bilingual brains.
Interest in the intersection between bilingualism and cognitive control and accessibility to neuroimaging methods has resulted in numerous studies with a variety of interpretations of the bilingual ...cognitive advantage. Neurocomputational Emergentism (or Neuroemergentism for short) is a new framework for understanding this relationship between bilingualism and cognitive control. This framework considers Emergence, in which two small elements are recombined in an interactive manner, yielding a non-linear effect. Added to this is the notion that Emergence can be captured in neural systems using computationally inspired models. This review poses that bilingualism and cognitive control, as examined through the Neuroemergentist framework, are interwoven through development and involve the non-linear growth of cognitive processing encompassing brain areas that combine and recombine, in symbiotic and parasitic ways, in order to handle more complex types of processing. The models that have sought to explain the neural substrates of bilingual cognitive differences will be discussed with a reinterpretation of the entire bilingual cognitive advantage within a Neuroemergentist framework incorporating its neural bases. It will conclude by discussing how this new Neuroemergentist approach alters our view of the effects of language experience on cognitive control. Avenues to move beyond the simple notion of a bilingual advantage or lack thereof will be proposed.
Children who experience a traumatic brain injury (TBI) are at elevated risk for a range of negative cognitive and neuropsychological outcomes. Identifying which children are at greatest risk for ...negative outcomes can be difficult due to the heterogeneity of TBI. To address this barrier, the current study applied a novel method of characterizing brain connectivity networks, Bayesian multi‐subject vector autoregressive modelling (BVAR‐connect), which used white matter integrity as priors to evaluate effective connectivity—the time‐dependent relationship in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activity between two brain regions—within the default mode network (DMN). In a prospective longitudinal study, children ages 8–15 years with mild to severe TBI underwent diffusion tensor imaging and resting state fMRI 7 weeks after injury; post‐concussion and anxiety symptoms were assessed 7 months after injury. The goals of this study were to (1) characterize differences in positive effective connectivity of resting‐state DMN circuitry between healthy controls and children with TBI, (2) determine if severity of TBI was associated with differences in DMN connectivity and (3) evaluate whether patterns of DMN effective connectivity predicted persistent post‐concussion symptoms and anxiety. Healthy controls had unique positive connectivity that mostly emerged from the inferior temporal lobes. In contrast, children with TBI had unique effective connectivity among orbitofrontal and parietal regions. These positive orbitofrontal‐parietal DMN effective connectivity patterns also differed by TBI severity and were associated with persisting behavioural outcomes. Effective connectivity may be a sensitive neuroimaging marker of TBI severity as well as a predictor of chronic post‐concussion symptoms and anxiety.
The goals of this study were to (1) identify the relationship between TBI and resting‐state neural circuitry, (2) determine if severity of TBI predicted differences in neural circuitry and (3) evaluate whether neural circuitry patterns predicted post‐concussion symptoms and anxiety persisting 7 months after injury. Inferior temporal lobe effective connectivity was absent for children who experienced a paediatric TBI (blue) compared with healthy controls (yellow). Instead, paediatric TBI patients had orbitofrontal‐parietal connectivity patterns, which were connected to behavioural outcomes (post‐concussion symptoms and anxiety) and depended on TBI severity (blue = mild; orange = moderate/severe).
Genetic variants related to dopamine functioning (e.g., the ANKK1/TaqIa polymorphism within the DRD2 gene and the Val158Met polymorphism within the COMT gene) have previously been shown to predict ...cognitive flexibility and learning (e.g., Colzato et al., 2010; Stelzel et al., 2010). Additionally, researchers have found that these genetic variants may also predict second language learning (Mamiya et al., 2016), although this relationship may change across the lifespan (Sugiura et al., 2011). The current study examined the role of the ANKK1/TaqIa and Val158Met polymorphisms along with age of second language acquisition (AoA) in order to predict levels of bilingual proficiency in Spanish-English bilinguals. Results indicated a three-way interaction such that the relationship between the genetic variants and bilingual proficiency depended on AoA. At earlier AoAs, having the genetic variant associated with higher levels of subcortical dopamine (A1+) predicted the highest levels of bilingual proficiency. At later AoAs, individuals with the genetic variant associated with cortical dopamine levels that are balanced between stability and flexibility (Val/Met) predicted the highest levels of bilingual proficiency. These results fit with theories about the development of language as a subcortical process early in life and as a cortical process later in life (Hernandez & Li, 2007), as well as the importance of both stability and flexibility in bilingual language development (Green & Abutalebi, 2013). Finally, this study raises questions about the direction of causality between bilingualism and cognitive control, which is central to the debate over the "bilingual advantage."
•Spanish-English bilinguals were genotyped for ANKK1/TaqIa and Val158Met SNPs.•Early bilinguals with the A1+ genotype achieved high proficiency.•Late bilinguals with the Val/Met genotype achieved high proficiency.•Becoming a proficient bilingual early in life is related to subcortical dopamine.•Becoming a proficiency bilingual later in life is related to cortical dopamine.
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