Blanco, B. , Molnar, M. & Caballero-Gaudes, C.
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language
During the first postnatal months the interaction between experience and brain maturation is especially relevant for the development of the brain?s network configuration. In our previous study with monolingual and bilingual infants at 4-months of age we demonstrated that the configuration of functional brain networks can be modulated by different linguistic environments (i.e., exposure to one vs. two languages). In the present study, we investigate how these specific neural adaptations to a bilingual environment evolve over the course of development. For this, we recorded spontaneous hemodynamic activity using whole-head Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) in awake 8-month-old Spanish or Basque monolingual (n=20) and Spanish-Basque bilingual (n=20) infants. Correlation coefficients were calculated on the time courses of oxyhemoglobin and deoxyhemoglobin as a measure of the degree of synchronization between channel pairs. We used a network-based statistical approach to reveal potential differences in the connectivity patterns between groups. Our results show that the development of functional brain networks at 8 months of age is still modulated as a consequence of an early and continued bilingual exposure.