Distinct hemispheric specializations for native and non-native languages in one-day-old newborns identified by fNIRS

Phetsamone Vannasing , Olivia Florea , Berta Gonzalez-Frankenberger , Julie Tremblay , Natacha Paquette , Dima Safi , Fabrice Wallois (1, 2) , Franco Lepore (3) , Renee Beland (4) , Maryse Lassonde , Anne Gallagher

1 GRAMFC - Groupe de Recherche sur l'Analyse Multimodale de la Fonction Cérébrale - UMR INSERM_S 1105
2 CHU Amiens-Picardie
3 UQAM - Université du Québec à Montréal = University of Québec in Montréal
4 CHUM - Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal

This study assessed whether the neonatal brain recruits different neural networks for native and non-native languages at birth. Twenty-seven one-day-old full-term infants underwent functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) recording during linguistic and non-linguistic stimulation. Fourteen newborns listened to linguistic stimuli (native and non-native language stories) and 13 newborns were exposed to non-linguistic conditions (native and non-native stimuli played in reverse). Comparisons between left and right hemisphere oxyhemoglobin (HbO(2)) concentration changes over the temporal areas revealed clear left hemisphere dominance for native language, whereas non-native stimuli were associated with right hemisphere lateralization. In addition, bilateral cerebral activation was found for non-linguistic stimulus processing. Overall, our findings indicate that from the first day after birth, native language and prosodic features are processed in parallel by distinct neural networks. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Phetsamone Vannasing, Olivia Florea, Berta Gonzalez-Frankenberger, Julie Tremblay, Natacha Paquette, et al.. Distinct hemispheric specializations for native and non-native languages in one-day-old newborns identified by fNIRS. Neuropsychologia, 2016, 84, pp.63-69. ⟨10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.01.038⟩. ⟨hal-03603395⟩