E-Letter responses to:

reports: J. Crinion, R. Turner, A. Grogan, T. Hanakawa, U. Noppeney, J. T. Devlin, T. Aso, S. Urayama, H. Fukuyama, K. Stockton, K. Usui, D. W. Green, and C. J. Price Language Control in the Bilingual Brain Science 2006; 312: 1537-1540 [Abstract] [Full text] [PDF]

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Left Caudate and Language Control

Maurits Van den Noort, Peggy Bosch, and Kenneth Hugdahl.   (10 August 2006)

Left Caudate and Language Control 10 August 2006
Maurits Van den Noort, Cognitive Neuroscientist Department of Biological and Medical Psychology, University of Bergen, Norway, Peggy Bosch, and Kenneth Hugdahl. Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Left Caudate and Language Control	How does the bilingual brain control which language is in use? Crinion et al. (1) present interesting results, suggesting that the left caudate plays a universal role in monitoring and controlling the language that is in use at any given time. Their study is very important, since previous functional imaging experiments (2) could not answer this question. Moreover, Crinion et al. (1) replicate their effects across three different experiments, whereas previous reports of language-selective effects (3) have not been replicated subsequently. However, Crinion et al. (1) focus on the language-dependent neuronal responses at the level of word meaning only; as a result, it is unclear what the exact role of the left caudate is at a more complex linguistic level (4). In our opinion, this is an important topic that needs to be investigated further in future bilingual research. Moreover, Crinion et al. (1) draw their conclusion that different languages converge on the same neuronal populations within the left anterior temporal cortex, on only three different languages, namely: English, German, and Japanese. Although we agree with them that English/German and Japanese come from entirely separate linguistic families, more languages need to be tested before claiming that this is strong evidence for the universality of the language mechanism. To conclude, the study by Crinion et al. (1) is of great importance in the understanding of how bilinguals can voluntarily control the use of different languages. However, more bilingual and multilingual studies, focusing not only on the level of word meaning, but also on a more complex linguistic level, need to be done. In addition, more languages from different linguistic families need to be investigated. These future studies on healthy participants, in combination with the results revealed from bilingual and multilingual patients with a lesion in the left caudate (5), could give a better answer to the question of whether the left caudate really plays a universal role in monitoring and controlling the use of different languages. References 1. J. Crinion et al., Science 312, 1537 (2006). 2. D. Perani, J. Abutalebi, Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 15, 202 (2005). 3. K. H. Kim, N. R. Relkin, K. M. Lee, J. Hirsch, Nature, 388, 171 (1997). 4. G. Vingerhoets et al., NeuroImage 20, 2181 (2003). 5. J. Abutalebi, A. Miozzo, S. F. Cappa, Neurocase 6, 51 (2000).