TY - JOUR
T1 - Language learning under working memory constraints correlates with microstructural differences in the ventral language pathway
AU - Lopez-Barroso, Diana
AU - De Diego-Balaguer, Ruth
AU - Cunillera, Toni
AU - Camara, Estela
AU - Münte, Thomas F.
AU - Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni
N1 - Funding Information:
Grant from the Volkswagen Foundation (T.F.M./A.R.F.) and Grants from the Spanish Government to A.R.F. (MICINN, PSI2008-03901) and R.D.B. (MICINN, PSI2008-3885). D.L.B. was supported by a predoctoral grant (2010FI_B1 00169) from
Funding Information:
the Catalan government. T.F.M. is also supported by the Deutche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, SFBTR31 TP A7).
Copyright:
Copyright 2012 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2011/12
Y1 - 2011/12
N2 - The present study combined behavioral measures and diffusion tensor imaging to investigate the neuroanatomical basis of language learning in relation to phonological working memory (WM). Participants were exposed to simplified artificial languages under WM constraints. The results underscore the role of the rehearsal subcomponent of WM in successful speech segmentation and rule learning. Moreover, when rehearsal was blocked task performance was correlated to the white matter microstructure of the left ventral pathway connecting frontal and temporal language-related cortical areas through the extreme/external capsule. This ventral pathway may therefore play an important additional role in language learning when the main dorsal pathway-dependent rehearsal mechanisms are not available.
AB - The present study combined behavioral measures and diffusion tensor imaging to investigate the neuroanatomical basis of language learning in relation to phonological working memory (WM). Participants were exposed to simplified artificial languages under WM constraints. The results underscore the role of the rehearsal subcomponent of WM in successful speech segmentation and rule learning. Moreover, when rehearsal was blocked task performance was correlated to the white matter microstructure of the left ventral pathway connecting frontal and temporal language-related cortical areas through the extreme/external capsule. This ventral pathway may therefore play an important additional role in language learning when the main dorsal pathway-dependent rehearsal mechanisms are not available.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=81055126619&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/cercor/bhr064
DO - 10.1093/cercor/bhr064
M3 - Journal articles
C2 - 21527790
AN - SCOPUS:81055126619
SN - 1047-3211
VL - 21
SP - 2742
EP - 2750
JO - Cerebral Cortex
JF - Cerebral Cortex
IS - 12
ER -
