Auditory cortex anatomy reflects multilingual phonological experience

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study explores the relationship between the anatomy of the auditory cortex and multilingual experience, shedding light on the complex mechanisms of auditory processing in humans. Integrating previous research on auditory information processing and the impact of bi- and multilingualism on brain structure, we investigate how the morphology of auditory brain regions reflects individuals’ language experience and, more specifically, their phonological repertoire. Leveraging two distinct samples comprising over 200 participants, each exposed to between 1 and 7 languages encompassing 36 different languages, we explore whether the morphological variability of auditory brain regions reflects individual language experience, specifically focusing on the phonological repertoire. Additionally, we examine the potential influence of typological distances between languages spoken by multilingual individuals on the neural signatures of multilingualism within the auditory cortex. Our findings revealed a relationship between the average thickness of the left and right second transverse temporal gyrus (TTG) and participants’ language experience. Model comparisons demonstrated that the inclusion of phoneme-level information in the language experience index accounted for the greatest variance in average TTG thickness (bilaterally). The direction of this effect was negative, indicating that a more extensive and more phonologically diverse language experience was associated with thinner cortices in the second TTG. Across two independent datasets, we provide robust evidence linking the degree of language experience and typological distance between languages to cortical thickness in early auditory brain regions. We propose that this phenomenon may reflect experience-driven pruning and neural efficiency, warranting further investigation through longitudinal studies of language acquisition. Moreover, our findings support the notion that experiences with typologically similar languages differ from those with typologically distant languages, offering valuable insights into the intricate relationship between language diversity and brain structure. Our findings also indicate that early auditory regions seem to represent phoneme-level cross-linguistic information, contrary to the most established models of language processing in the brain, which suggest that phonological processing happens in more lateral posterior STG and STS.