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Independent effects of multilingual experience on resting-state functional connectivity across the adult lifespan
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Poster E34 in Poster Session E, Thursday, October 26, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Toms Voits1, Jubin Abutalebi2,1, Gaute Berglund1, Vincent DeLuca1, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia3,1, Kirill Elin1, Anders Gabrielsen1, Janine Rook4, Jason Rothman1,3; 1UiT the Arctic University of Norway, 2University Vita Salute San Raffaele, 3Universidad Nebrija, 4University of Groningen
Bi-/multilingualism has been shown to contribute to the accrual of neurocognitive reserve and resilience against decline in cognitive aging (CA) (Bialystok, 2021; Gallo et al., 2022). However, most research on multilingualism and neurocognition in aging examines older individuals, thus limiting our understanding of how multilingualism affects neurocognition throughout adulthood. Furthermore, most studies investigating bi-/multilingualism and CA operationalize multilingualism as a categorical variable, overlooking the heterogeneous nature of individual language experiences (DeLuca et al., 2019). Lastly, bi-/multilingualism is not the only contributor to individual variability in CA trajectories. Other lifestyle factors, such as education and occupational attainment (Darwish et al., 2018), sustained engagement in physical exercise (Young et al., 2015), and healthy dietary patterns (Clare et al., 2017) are also suggested to contribute to the building up of reserves against CA symptoms (Stern et al., 2020) and correlate with improved brain and cognitive outcomes in older age. However, these factors are seldom accounted for in detail in the bi-/multilingualism literature. To address these gaps, the present study investigated the neurocognitive effects of individual differences in multilingual experience across a wide age range. A large sample of bi-/multilingual native speakers of Norwegian with English as one of their additional languages was recruited (N=136, mean age = 46.53, SD=18.43, range 18-82). Participants completed a battery of questionnaires tapping into their language background (LHQ 3.0, Li et al., 2020), engagement in physical exercise (IPAQ-SF; Craig et al., 2003), diet (SFFFQ; Cleghorn et al., 2016), social networks (SNI; Cohen, 1997), and overall cognitively active lifestyle (CRS; León et al., 2014). Additionally, a resting-state electroencephalography (rs-EEG) recording was collected. Rs-EEG coherence was calculated, as it has been previously found to index increased resilience against CA (Fleck et al., 2017, 2019). Coherence was computed between electrode regions-of-interest (ROIs) across EEG frequency bands (following Bice et al., 2019, Pereira Soares et al., 2021). Multilingual language experience was operationalized via the multilingual diversity score (MLD), an entropy-based continuous measure of multilingualism (e.g., Gullifer & Titone, 2019) from the LHQ. Robust linear mixed-effects models were employed to examine the effects of age and MLD on coherence across the ROIs while controlling for other lifestyle factors. For each frequency band, the model specified ROI, age, sex, MLD, and various lifestyle scores as fixed effects, as well as interaction terms between ROI, MLD, and age. Higher MLD scores were associated with increased coherence between the left parietal and the right anterior electrode clusters across the alpha, low beta, and high beta bands, and between the left frontal and right parietal electrode clusters in the high beta band, with increasing age. Additionally, higher MLD scores were linked to decreased coherence between the mid-frontal and right parietal electrode clusters in the high beta band with increasing age. Taken together, these findings suggest the degree of multilingual engagement impacts functional coherence across the adult lifespan and independently contributes to increased reserves against CA effects. Moreover, they highlight the need to consider multilingualism in the context of other lifestyle factors when examining CA trajectories.
Topic Areas: Multilingualism,