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The Journal of Neuroscience, November 12, 2008, 28(46):11900-11905; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3141-08.2008

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Brief Communications
Morphology of the Insula in Relation to Hearing Status and Sign Language Experience

John S. Allen,1,2 Karen Emmorey,3 Joel Bruss,4 and Hanna Damasio1,2

1Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-2520, 2Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-1061, 3Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Neuroscience, San Diego State University, San Diego, California 92120, and 4Department of Neurology, Laboratory of Computational Neuroimaging, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa 52242

Correspondence should be addressed to Karen Emmorey, Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Neuroscience, San Diego State University, 6495 Alvarado Road Suite 200, San Diego, CA 92120. Email: kemmorey{at}mail.sdsu.edu

We investigated whether auditory deprivation and/or sign language exposure during development alters the macroscopic neuroanatomy of the human insula. Volumetric analyses were based on MRI data from 25 congenitally deaf subjects who were native users of American Sign Language (ASL), 25 hearing subjects with no knowledge of ASL, and 16 hearing subjects who grew up in deaf families and were native ASL signers. Significant variation in insula volume was associated with both hearing status and sign language experience. Compared with both hearing groups, deaf subjects exhibited a significant increase in the amount of gray matter in the left posterior insular lobule, which we hypothesize may be related to the dependence on lip-reading and articulatory-based (rather than auditory-based) representations of speech for deaf individuals. Both deaf and hearing signers exhibited an increased volume of white matter in the right insula compared with hearing nonsigners. We hypothesize that the distinct morphology of the right insula for ASL signers may arise from enhanced connectivity resulting from an increased reliance on cross-modal sensory integration in sign language compared with spoken language.

Key words: insula; American Sign Language; deaf; gray matter; white matter; MRI

Received July 7, 2008; revised Sept. 20, 2008; accepted Sept. 30, 2008.

Correspondence should be addressed to Karen Emmorey, Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Neuroscience, San Diego State University, 6495 Alvarado Road Suite 200, San Diego, CA 92120. Email: kemmorey{at}mail.sdsu.edu






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