Lack of effects of eight-week left dorsolateral prefrontal theta burst stimulation on white matter macro/microstructure and connection in autism.

Whether brain stimulation could modulate brain structure in autism remains unknown. This study explored the impact of continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on white matter macro/microstructure in intellectually able children and emerging adults with autism. Sixty autistic participants were randomized (30 active) and received active or sham cTBS for eight weeks twice per week, 16 total sessions using a double-blind (participant-, rater-, analyst-blinded) design. All participants received high-angular resolution diffusion MR imaging at baseline and week 8. Twenty-eight participants in the active group and twenty-seven in the sham group with good imaging quality entered the final analysis. With longitudinal fixel-based analysis and network-based statistics, we found no significant difference between the active and sham groups in changes of white matter macro/microstructure and connections following cTBS. In addition, we found no association between baseline white matter macro/microstructure and autistic symptom changes from baseline to week 8 in the active group. In conclusion, we did not find a significant impact of left DLPFC cTBS on white matter macro/microstructure and connections in children and emerging adults with autism. These findings need to be interpreted in the context that the current intellectually able cohort in a single university hospital site limits the generalizability. Future studies are required to investigate if higher stimulation intensities and/or doses, other personal factors, or rTMS parameters might confer significant brain structural changes visible on MRI in ASD.

Neural substrates of L2-L1 transfer effects on phonological awareness in young Chinese-English bilingual children.

The growing trend of bilingual education between Chinese and English has contributed to a rise in the number of early bilingual children, who were exposed to L2 prior to formal language instruction of L1. The L2-L1 transfer effect in an L1-dominant environment has been well established. However, the threshold of L2 proficiency at which such transfer manifests remains unclear. This study investigated the behavioral and neural processes involved when manipulating phonemes in an auditory phonological task to uncover the transfer effect in young bilingual children. Sixty-two first graders from elementary schools in Taiwan were recruited in this study (29 Chinese monolinguals, 33 Chinese-English bilinguals). The brain activity was measured using fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy). Bilingual children showed right lateralization to process Chinese and left lateralization to process English, which supports more on the accommodation effect within the framework of the assimilation-accommodation hypothesis. Also, compared to monolinguals, bilingual children showed more bilateral frontal activation in Chinese, potentially reflecting a mixed influence from L2-L1 transfer effects and increased cognitive load of bilingual exposure. These results elucidate the developmental adjustments in the neural substrates associated with early bilingual exposure in phonological processing, offering valuable insights into the bilingual learning process.

Phonological and morphological literacy skills in English and Chinese: A cross-linguistic neuroimaging comparison of Chinese-English bilingual and monolingual English children.

Over the course of literacy development, children learn to recognize word sounds and meanings in print. Yet, they do so differently across alphabetic and character-based orthographies such as English and Chinese. To uncover cross-linguistic influences on children's literacy, we asked young Chinese-English simultaneous bilinguals and English monolinguals (N = 119, ages 5-10) to complete phonological and morphological awareness (MA) literacy tasks. Children completed the tasks in the auditory modality in each of their languages during functional near-infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging. Cross-linguistically, comparisons between bilinguals' two languages revealed that the task that was more central to reading in a given orthography, such as phonological awareness (PA) in English and MA in Chinese, elicited less activation in the left inferior frontal and parietal regions. Group comparisons between bilinguals and monolinguals in English, their shared language of academic instruction, revealed that the left inferior frontal was less active during phonology but more active during morphology in bilinguals relative to monolinguals. MA skills are generally considered to have greater language specificity than PA skills. Bilingual literacy training in a skill that is maximally similar across languages, such as PA, may therefore yield greater automaticity for this skill, as reflected in the lower activation in bilinguals relative to monolinguals. This interpretation is supported by negative correlations between proficiency and brain activation. Together, these findings suggest that both the structural characteristics and literacy experiences with a given language can exert specific influences on bilingual and monolingual children's emerging brain networks for learning to read.

Sources of Heterogeneity in Functional Connectivity During English Word Processing in Bilingual and Monolingual Children.

Diversity and variation in language experiences, such as bilingualism, contribute to heterogeneity in children's neural organization for language and brain development. To uncover sources of such heterogeneity in children's neural language networks, the present study examined the effects of bilingual proficiency on children's neural organization for language function. To do so, we took an innovative person-specific analytical approach to investigate young Chinese-English and Spanish-English bilingual learners of structurally distinct languages. Bilingual and English monolingual children (N = 152, M(SD)age = 7.71(1.32)) completed an English word recognition task during functional near-infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging, along with language and literacy tasks in each of their languages. Two key findings emerged. First, bilinguals' heritage language proficiency (Chinese or Spanish) made a unique contribution to children's language network density. Second, the findings reveal common and unique patterns in children's patterns of task-related functional connectivity. Common across all participants were short-distance neural connections within left hemisphere regions associated with semantic processes (within middle temporal and frontal regions). Unique to more proficient language users were additional long-distance connections between frontal, temporal, and bilateral regions within the broader language network. The study informs neurodevelopmental theories of language by revealing the effects of heterogeneity in language proficiency and experiences on the structure and quality of emerging language neural networks in linguistically diverse learners.

A lack of efficacy of continuous theta burst stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in autism: A double blind randomized sham-controlled trial.

Although previous open-label trials suggest the therapeutic potential of inhibitory repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), methodological caveats exist. We conducted an 8-week randomized, double-blind sham-controlled trial to investigate the efficacy of inhibitory continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS, a variant of rTMS) over the left DLPFC in individuals with ASD. Sixty children, adolescents and young adults (aged 8-30 years) with ASD without co-occurring intellectual disabilities were randomized to a 16-session 8-week cTBS versus sham stimulation course, with a follow-up 4 weeks after the trial. The Active group was not superior to the Sham group in any clinical or neuropsychological metrics at Week 8 or Week 12. Time effects of 8-week cTBS on symptoms and executive function were remarkable in both Active and Sham groups, with comparable response rates and effect sizes of changes in symptoms/cognition between groups. Our results from a sufficiently powered sample do not endorse the superior efficacy of cTBS over the left DLPFC to the shamed stimulation for children, adolescents and adults with ASD. These findings suggest that earlier positive open-label trial findings may be generalized by generalized/placebo effects. This highlights the urgent need for more rTMS/TBS studies with rigorous trial designs in ASD.

Sex differences in medication-naïve adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A counting Stroop functional MRI study.

Emerging evidence supports deficits in executive functions in the fronto-striato-parietal network in individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, most functional studies recruited men with ADHD only, leaving it unclear whether executive deficits are also demonstrated in women with ADHD. Thus, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the sex differences in a counting Stroop task that explored interference control. The sample consisted of 55 medication-naïve adults with ADHD (28 men, 27 women) and 52 healthy controls (HC, 26 men, 26 women). The Conners' Continuous Performance Test further evaluated the performance of focused attention (standard deviation of the reaction time, RTSD) and vigilance (the reaction time change across different inter-stimulus intervals, RTISI). First, for the main effect of diagnosis, compared to the HC group, the ADHD group showed less activation in the caudate nucleus and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Second, for the main effect of sex, no significant effects were found. Third, a diagnosis-by-sex interaction indicated that the magnitude of ADHD-HC difference was greater for women than men in the right IFG and precuneus, reflecting greater difficulties for ADHD women to resolve interference. Conversely, no significant brain activation showed greater ADHD-HC difference in men than women. Also, reduced right IFG and precuneus activation was negatively associated with the scores assessing focused attention and vigilance in ADHD women, indicating that the attentional abilities are disrupted in ADHD women. Abnormalities in the frontoparietal areas may represent the main difference between ADHD women and ADHD men.

The neurocognitive basis of Chinese idiomatic constructions and processing differences between native speakers and L2 learners of Mandarin.

Classic linguistic analyses assume that syntax is the center of linguistic system. Under this assumption, a finite set of rules can produce an infinite number of sentences. By contrast, construction grammar posits that grammar emerges from language use. Chinese quadrisyllabic idiomatic expressions (QIEs) offer a testing ground for this theoretical construct owing to their high productivity. To understand the cognitive processing of structure and meaning during reading comprehension, we used a semantic judgment task to measure behavioral performance and brain activation (functional MRI). Participants were 19 Mandarin native speakers and 19 L2 learners of intermediate and advanced levels of Mandarin. In the task, participants were instructed to indicate whether the interpretation of a QIE was correct. Our behavioral results showed that L2 learners processed high frequency QIEs faster than low frequency ones. By contrast, low frequency QIEs were processed faster than high frequency ones by native speakers. This phenomenon may be attributed to semantic satiation which impedes the interpretation of high frequency QIEs. To unravel the puzzle, a further functional MRI experiment on native speakers was conducted. The results revealed that the comparison of high-frequency and low-frequency QIEs promoted significant anterior cingulate activation. Also, the comparison of idiomatic and pseudo-idiomatic constructions exhibited significant activation in the bilateral temporal poles, a region that computes semantics rather than syntactic structure. This result indicated that, for native speakers, processing Chinese idiomatic constructions is a conceptually driven process.

Lack of effects of four-week theta burst stimulation on white matter macro/microstructure in children and adolescents with autism.

Following the published behavioral and cognitive results of this single-blind parallel sham-controlled randomized clinical trial, the current study aimed to explore the impact of intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS), a variant of excitatory transcranial magnetic stimulation, over the bilateral posterior superior temporal sulci (pSTS) on white matter macro/microstructure in intellectually able children and adolescents with autism. Participants were randomized and blindly received active or sham iTBS for 4 weeks (the single-blind sham-controlled phase). Then, all participants continued to receive active iTBS for another 4 weeks (the open-label phase). The clinical results were published elsewhere. Here, we present diffusion magnetic resonance imaging data on potential changes in white matter measures after iTBS. Twenty-two participants in Active-Active group and 27 participants in Sham-Active group underwent multi-shell high angular resolution diffusion imaging (64-direction for b = 2000 & 1000 s/mm2, respectively) at baseline, week 4, and week 8. With longitudinal fixel-based analysis, we found no white matter changes following iTBS from baseline to week 4 (a null treatment by time interaction and a null within-group paired comparison in the Active-Active group), nor from baseline to week 8 (null within-group paired comparisons in both Active-Active and Sham-Active groups). As for the brain-symptoms relationship, we did not find baseline white matter metrics associated with symptom changes at week 4 in either group. Our results raise the question of what the minimal cumulative stimulation dose required to induce the white matter plasticity is.

Brain bases of English morphological processing: A comparison between Chinese-English, Spanish-English bilingual, and English monolingual children.

How do early bilingual experiences influence children's neural architecture for word processing? Dual language acquisition can yield common influences that may be shared across different bilingual groups, as well as language-specific influences stemming from a given language pairing. To investigate these effects, we examined bilingual English speakers of Chinese or Spanish, and English monolinguals, all raised in the US (N = 152, ages 5-10). Children completed an English morphological word processing task during fNIRS neuroimaging. The findings revealed both language-specific and shared bilingual effects. The language-specific effects were that Chinese and Spanish bilinguals showed principled differences in their neural organization for English lexical morphology. The common bilingual effects shared by the two groups were that in both bilingual groups, increased home language proficiency was associated with stronger left superior temporal gyrus (STG) activation when processing the English word structures that are most dissimilar from the home language. The findings inform theories of language and brain development during the key periods of neural reorganization for learning to read by illuminating experience-based plasticity in linguistically diverse learners.

Neural substrates of theory of mind in adults with autism spectrum disorder: An fMRI study of the social animation task.

BACKGROUND: Although the neural mechanisms of the theory of mind (ToM) in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) through fMRI using the social animation task have been investigated, little is known in adults with ASD. Therefore, the present study aimed to explore the neural substrates of ToM in adults with ASD. Moreover, we aimed to elucidate the relationship between brain activation and behavior of social interaction in adults with ASD. METHODS: Twenty-four healthy controls and 24 adults with the clinical diagnosis of ASD were recruited. Participants were asked to complete the social animation task in functional magnetic resonance imaging. The imaging analyses of within (whole brain analysis) and between (5 regions of interest) group comparisons were conducted to explore the process of ToM. The correlation analyses were further conducted to explore the relationship between neural activations associated with ToM and social interaction abilities assessed by ADI-R. RESULTS: The ASD group showed greater activation in the left precuneus and right superior temporal gyrus (STG) than the control group. For correlation analyses, greater right STG activation was positively correlated with autistic symptoms assessed by the ADI-R in the ASD group. CONCLUSION: ASD adults might spend a lot of effort on identification processing, thereby influencing social communication skills. Also, the neural deficits of ToM in ASD adults might be associated with their social interaction difficulties.

Money or funny: Effective connectivity during service recovery with a DCM-PEB approach.

While monetary compensation is considered the most effective service recovery strategy, relief theory claims that humor may also be useful in service recovery situations. This study investigated the effects of humor in service recovery using dynamic causal modeling and parametric empirical Bayes analysis to identify effective connectivity (EC) patterns in the dopaminergic reward system across four conditions representing different service recovery strategies: monetary compensation and humor (MH), monetary compensation and an apology (MA), non-monetary compensation using humor (H), and non-monetary compensation using an apology (CON, the control condition). The findings support the importance of the nucleus accumbens (NAc) in the monetary compensation (MH and MA) conditions and the amygdala in the non-monetary compensation (H and CON) conditions. Monetary compensation (MH and MA) resulted in right substantia nigra (rSN) to NAc EC, suggesting the processing of recovery satisfaction associated with perceived outcome fairness. Conversely, non-monetary compensation strategies (H and CON) resulted in left substantia nigra (lSN) to amygdala EC, suggesting the processing of satisfaction related to perceived interactional fairness. The use of humor for service recovery resulted in VTA-to-lSN-to-amygdala EC during humor appreciation, while the use of apologies (CON and MA) resulted in lSN-to-amygdala and lSN-to-VTA connectivity. Surprisingly, processing satisfaction in the MH condition did not activate the amygdala during humor appreciation. Coping humor could be norm-violating for service recovery, and its effectiveness depends on multiple factors. The results suggest that monetary compensation, humorous responses, and apologies play key roles in neurological responses to service recovery strategies.

Hemispheric lateralization of semantic processing before and after aripiprazole treatment in first-episode psychosis or ultra-high risk state.

Whether aberrant language-related lateralization can be improved after antipsychotic treatment in drug-free patients with first-episode psychosis or ultra-high risk state is little known. We aimed to investigate the improvement in lateralization of semantic processing after antipsychotic treatment and associated clinical and cognitive changes. Twenty-one drug-free patients with first-episode psychosis or ultra-high risk state underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging with a semantic task, neuropsychological testing, and clinical assessments with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale before and after 6 weeks of aripiprazole treatment. A lateralization index of the region of interest, i.e., inferior frontal gyrus, was calculated and correlated with the behavioral indices of the semantic task, Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale scores, and language-related neuropsychological test scores. After treatment, the lateralization index of the inferior frontal gyrus was significantly increased, which was related to reduced activation of the right inferior frontal gyrus. The increase in the lateralization index was significantly associated with the increase in verbal fluency score. A higher baseline accuracy of the semantic task was associated with a higher post-treatment lateralization index of the inferior frontal gyrus and greater improvement of the total score and positive subscore of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Our findings indicated aripiprazole treatment significantly increased semantic processing-related lateralization in the inferior frontal gyrus in drug-free patients with first-episode psychosis or ultra-high risk state. A higher baseline accuracy might predict a higher post-treatment lateralization index and greater symptom improvement.

Effective connectivity of the amygdala during the consumption of erotic, sexual humor, and monetary rewards with a DCM-PEB approach.

While a large body of research exists on the processing of monetary rewards, less is known about sexual reward processing. This study aimed to identify effective connectivity for the consumption of sexual (erotic and sexual humor) and non-sexual (monetary) rewards, using dynamic causal modeling and parametric empirical Bayes with subjective hedonic ratings included. Our results support the importance of the amygdala for sexual humor amusement, the nucleus accumbens (NAc) for monetary rewards, and the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) for erotic pleasure. The amygdala, NAc, and lOFC are major dopaminergic targets with known roles in the reward circuitry. Appreciating sexual humor was associated with ventral tegmental area (VTA) to amygdala connectivity. Enjoying monetary gains was associated with VTA-to-NAc and amygdala-to-NAc connectivity. The mesolimbic dopamine system originates in the VTA and sends major projections to the amygdala and NAc. Specifically, sexual humor appreciation was associated with effective connectivity from the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) to the amygdala, suggesting that subjective pleasure triggers activation of the vmPFC which exerts an excitatory influence on the amygdala. Unexpectedly, processing pleasure from monetary gains was linked to VTA-to-vmPFC connectivity, rather than the expected vmPFC-to-NAc connectivity. Importantly, we identified core roles for the amygdala. Sexual humor appreciation was associated with VTA-to-amygdala and vmPFC-to-amygdala effective connectivity, while we found amygdala-to-lOFC connectivity for erotic pleasure and amygdala-to-NAc connectivity for pleasure from monetary gains. Our findings represent an important step in understanding how effective connectivity in the mesocorticolimbic-amygdala circuitry differs for processing the consumption of sexual and monetary rewards.

A Counting Stroop Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study on the Effects of ORADUR-Methylphenidate in Drug-Naive Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Objective: Methylphenidate is effective in reducing the clinical symptoms of patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). ORADUR®-methylphenidate is a new extended-release preparation of methylphenidate. This study aimed at identifying brain regions with activation changes and their correlations with neuropsychological functions after treatment with ORADUR-methylphenidate in children with ADHD. Methods: We recruited drug-naive children with ADHD and age- and sex-matched typically developing (TD) children. They were all scanned with the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during the counting Stroop task at baseline, and those with ADHD had the second fMRI assessment after 8-week treatment with ORADUR-methylphenidate. The Rapid Visual Information Processing (RVP) and Conners' Continuous Performance Test (CCPT) were used to assess the attention performance of the ADHD (before and after treatment) and TD groups. Results: ORADUR-methylphenidate significantly decreased inattention (Cohen d = 2.17) and hyperactivity-impulsivity (Cohen d = 0.98) symptoms. We found less activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) in the pre-treatment ADHD children than TD children and greater treatment-induced activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC). There was no significant difference between the post-treatment ADHD and TD groups. However, the treatment-related activations in the dACC, rDLPFC, and rIFG were significantly correlated with CCPT and RVP measures. Conclusions: Our findings indicated that ORADUR-methylphenidate increased brain activations in the dACC, rDLPFC, and rIFG in children with ADHD, associated with improved focused attention, reduced impulsivity, and enhanced inhibition control. Activities of these brain regions might be biomarkers for the treatment effectiveness of methylphenidate for ADHD. Clinical Trials Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT02450890.

Differential neural substrates for responding to monetary, sexual humor, and erotic rewards.

Sexual humor involves neural mechanisms related to both humor and sexual arousal. However, evidence on the role of the amygdala in processing sexual humor is lacking. Unlike erotic stimuli that directly involve a biological drive, sexual humor gains its value through learned associations. Processes related to responding to erotic versus monetary rewards have been identified in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) along a postero-anterior axis, but it is less clear whether these processes are also active during the appreciation of sexual humor. Results showed the processing of sexual humor appreciation in the amygdala. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis further identified functional connectivity in the amygdala-midbrain coupling during sexual humor versus monetary gains appreciation. The present study provides evidence demonstrating roles for the posterior OFC (pOFC) and anterior OFC (aOFC) in distinguishing between sexual (sexual humor and erotic) and non-sexual (monetary) rewards. The experience of sexual pleasure induced by erotic rewards involves phylogenetically and ontogenetically older regions in the pOFC, while the experience of receiving monetary gains involves the aOFC. This study also provides additional insights into sexual humor appreciation in the pOFC, with findings of a postero-anterior dissociation in the processing of sexual humor appreciation. PPI analysis revealed functional connectivity in the pOFC-amygdala coupling in response to both types of sexual rewards versus monetary rewards. Together, our results suggest that the amygdala serves as a reward hub, especially in processing sexual humor versus monetary gains appreciation. Functional connectivity analysis showed amygdala-midbrain and pOFC-amygdala coupling during the appreciation of sexual humor.

White matter microstructural and morphometric alterations in autism: implications for intellectual capabilities.

BACKGROUND: Neuroimage literature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has a moderate-to-high risk of bias, partially because those combined with intellectual impairment (II) and/or minimally verbal (MV) status are generally ignored. We aimed to provide more comprehensive insights into white matter alterations of ASD, inclusive of individuals with II (ASD-II-Only) or MV expression (ASD-MV). METHODS: Sixty-five participants with ASD (ASD-Whole; 16.6 ± 5.9 years; comprising 34 intellectually able youth, ASD-IA, and 31 intellectually impaired youth, ASD-II, including 24 ASD-II-Only plus 7 ASD-MV) and 38 demographic-matched typically developing controls (TDC; 17.3 ± 5.6 years) were scanned in accelerated diffusion-weighted MRI. Fixel-based analysis was undertaken to investigate the categorical differences in fiber density (FD), fiber cross section (FC), and a combined index (FDC), and brain symptom/cognition associations. RESULTS: ASD-Whole had reduced FD in the anterior and posterior corpus callosum and left cerebellum Crus I, and smaller FDC in right cerebellum Crus II, compared to TDC. ASD-IA, relative to TDC, had no significant discrepancies, while ASD-II showed almost identical alterations to those from ASD-Whole vs. TDC. ASD-II-Only had greater FD/FDC in the isthmus splenium of callosum than ASD-MV. Autistic severity negatively correlated with FC in right Crus I. Nonverbal full-scale IQ positively correlated with FC/FDC in cerebellum VI. FD/FDC of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex showed a diagnosis-by-executive function interaction. LIMITATIONS: We could not preclude the potential effects of age and sex from the ASD cohort, although statistical tests suggested that these factors were not influential. Our results could be confounded by variable psychiatric comorbidities and psychotropic medication uses in our ASD participants recruited from outpatient clinics, which is nevertheless closer to a real-world presentation of ASD. The outcomes related to ASD-MV were considered preliminaries due to the small sample size within this subgroup. Finally, our study design did not include intellectual impairment-only participants without ASD to disentangle the mixture of autistic and intellectual symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: ASD-associated white matter alterations appear driven by individuals with II and potentially further by MV. Results suggest that changes in the corpus callosum and cerebellum are key for psychopathology and cognition associated with ASD. Our work highlights an essential to include understudied subpopulations on the spectrum in research.

Exploring social emotion processing in autism: evaluating the reading the mind in the eyes test using network analysis.

BACKGROUND: Features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) include difficulties in processing and interpreting socioemotional information. The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test (RMET) is a validated measurement for processing socioemotional ability. However, previous RMET studies did not explore patterns of incorrect answers and the emotional valence of the test items. This study used the Taiwanese version of the RMET and the network analysis methods to examine the differences in underlying mechanisms of socioemotional processes between 30 males with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (mean age = 18 years) and 30 healthy control males (mean age = 17 years). For each test item, a picture of a person's eyes and partial face was shown with four words describing the emotional status on picture corners. Participants were instructed to choose one of the four words that best matched the person's thinking or feeling. We further classified the words into three valences of emotional categories to examine socioemotional processes. RESULTS: Our results showed that ASD males performed poorer on the RMET than the controls. ASD males had higher network density and in-degree scores, especially in negative words, than control males. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that males with ASD might have deficits in mapping the best emotional concept words to the target item, especially for processing negative emotion.

Morphological and phonological processing in English monolingual, Chinese-English bilingual, and Spanish-English bilingual children: An fNIRS neuroimaging dataset.

This article documents a functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) neuroimaging dataset deposited in Deep Blue Data. The dataset included neuroimaging and behavioral data from N = 343 children aged 5-11 with a diverse linguistic background, including children who are English monolingual, Chinese-English, and Spanish-English bilingual. Children completed phonological and morphological awareness tasks in each of their languages during fNIRS neuroimaging. They also completed a wide range of language and reading tasks. Parents filled in questionnaires to report children's demographic information as well as their home language and literacy backgrounds. The dataset is valuable for researchers in the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience to further investigate questions such as the effects of bilingualism on children's neural basis for literacy development.

What's in a word? Cross-linguistic influences on Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilingual children's word reading development.

This study investigates the cross-linguistic transfer of literacy skills in Spanish-English, Chinese-English bilingual, and English monolingual children (N = 283, 5-10 years). Research question 1 examines English literacy and asks how phonological and morpho-semantic skills contribute to word reading as a function of children's language background. Structural equation modeling revealed contrasting bilingual effects: compared to English monolinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals relied more on phonological awareness in word reading, whereas Chinese-English bilinguals relied more on lexical knowledge. Research question 2 examines relations between bilinguals' heritage language proficiency and English literacy. Results revealed direct and indirect effects of heritage language meta-linguistic skills on English word reading. The study yields implications for reading theories and instructional practices in optimizing literacy in linguistically diverse children.

Neuro-Cognitive Differences in Semantic Processing Between Native Speakers and Proficient Learners of Mandarin Chinese.

The present study aimed to investigate the neural mechanism underlying semantic processing in Mandarin Chinese adult learners, focusing on the learners who were Indo-European language speakers with advanced levels of proficiency in Mandarin Chinese. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging technique and a semantic judgment task to test 24 Mandarin Chinese adult learners (L2 group) and 26 Mandarin Chinese adult native speakers (L1 group) as a control group. In the task, participants were asked to indicate whether two-character pairs were related in meaning. Compared to the L1 group, the L2 group had greater activation in the bilateral occipital regions, including the fusiform gyrus and middle occipital gyrus, as well as the right superior parietal lobule. On the other hand, less activation in the bilateral temporal regions was found in the L2 group relative to the L1 group. Correlation analysis further revealed that, within the L2 group, increased activation in the left middle temporal gyrus/superior temporal gyrus (M/STG, BA 21) was correlated with higher accuracy in the semantic judgment task as well as better scores in the two vocabulary tests, the Assessment of Chinese character list for grade 3 to grade 9 (A39) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised. In addition, functional connectivity analysis showed that connectivity strength between the left fusiform gyrus and left ventral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG, BA 47) was modulated by the accuracy in the semantic judgment task in the L1 group. By contrast, this modulation effect was weaker in the L2 group. Taken together, our study suggests that Mandarin Chinese adult learners rely on greater recruitment of the bilateral occipital regions to process orthographic information to access the meaning of Chinese characters. Also, our correlation results provide convergent evidence that the left M/STG (BA 21) plays a crucial role in the storage of semantic knowledge for readers to access to conceptual information. Moreover, the connectivity results indicate that the left ventral pathway (left fusiform gyrus-left ventral IFG) is associated with orthographic-semantic processing in Mandarin Chinese. However, this semantic-related ventral pathway might require more time and language experience to be developed, especially for the late adult learners of Mandarin Chinese.