Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 110, Issue 32, Pages 13168-13173Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1301696110
Keywords
white matter; dorsal stream; ventral stream; diffusion tensor imaging
Categories
Funding
- FP7 ERC [StG_313841]
- Spanish Government Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [PSI2011-23624, PSI2011-29219]
- Catalan government [2010FI_B1 00169]
- Spanish Government [AP2010-4179]
- Guy's and St Thomas' Charity
- Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health at South London and Maudsley National Health Service Foundation Trust
- Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London
- ICREA Funding Source: Custom
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Human language requires constant learning of new words, leading to the acquisition of an average vocabulary of more than 30,000 words in adult life. The ability to learn new words is highly variable and may rely on the integration between auditory and motor information. Here, we combined diffusion imaging tractography and functional MRI to study whether the strength of anatomical and functional connectivity between auditory and motor language networks is associated with word learning ability. Our results showed that performance in word learning correlates with microstructural properties and strength of functional connectivity of the direct connections between Broca's and Wernicke's territories in the left hemisphere. This study suggests that our ability to learn new words relies on an efficient and fast communication between temporal and frontal areas. The absence of these connections in other animals may explain the unique ability of learning words in humans.
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