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The Journal of Neuroscience, January 31, 2007, 27(5):1184-1189; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4442-06.2007

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Anatomical Traces of Vocabulary Acquisition in the Adolescent Brain

HweeLing Lee,¹ Joseph T. Devlin,² Clare Shakeshaft,¹ Lauren H. Stewart,³ Amanda Brennan,¹ Jen Glensman,¹ Katherine Pitcher,⁵ Jenny Crinion,¹ Andrea Mechelli,⁶ Richard S. J. Frackowiak,^1,7,8 David W. Green,⁴ and Cathy J. Price¹

¹Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London (UCL), London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom, ²Department of Clinical Neurology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6HE, United Kingdom, ³Subdepartment of Clinical Health Psychology and ⁴Department of Psychology, UCL, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom, ⁵School of Psychology, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, 4041 Durban, South Africa, ⁶Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London SE5 8AF, United Kingdom, ⁷Département d'Études Cognitives, École Normale Superieure, 75230 Paris, France, and ⁸Istituti di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico Santa Lucia, 00179 Rome, Italy

Correspondence should be addressed to Cathy J. Price, Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK. Email: c.price{at}fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk

A surprising discovery in recent years is that the structure of the adult human brain changes when a new cognitive or motor skill is learned. This effect is seen as a change in local gray or white matter density that correlates with behavioral measures. Critically, however, the cognitive and anatomical mechanisms underlying these learning-related structural brain changes remain unknown. Here, we combined brain imaging, detailed behavioral analyses, and white matter tractography in English-speaking monolingual adolescents to show that a critical linguistic prerequisite (namely, knowledge of vocabulary) is proportionately related to relative gray matter density in bilateral posterior supramarginal gyri. The effect was specific to the number of words learned, regardless of verbal fluency or other cognitive abilities. The identified region was found to have direct connections to other inferior parietal areas that separately process either the sounds of words or their meanings, suggesting that the posterior supramarginal gyrus plays a role in linking the basic components of vocabulary knowledge. Together, these analyses highlight the cognitive and anatomical mechanisms that mediate an essential language skill.

Key words: language; parietal; connectivity; structure; development; imaging

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Received Oct. 12, 2006; revised Dec. 4, 2006; accepted Dec. 29, 2006.

Correspondence should be addressed to Cathy J. Price, Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK. Email: c.price{at}fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk

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