Neural stimulation has a long-term effect on foreign vocabulary acquisition

Pasqualotto, Achille and Kobanbay, Begüm and Proulx, Michael J. (2015) Neural stimulation has a long-term effect on foreign vocabulary acquisition. Neural Plasticity . ISSN 2090-5904 (Print) 1687-5443 (Online)

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Abstract

Acquisition of a foreign language is a challenging task that is becoming increasingly more important in the world nowadays. There is evidence suggesting that the frontal and temporal cortices are involved in language processing and comprehension, but it is still unknown whether foreign language acquisition recruits additional cortical areas in a causal manner. For the first time, we used transcranial random noise stimulation on the frontal and parietal brain areas, in order to compare its effect on the acquisition of unknown foreign words and a sham, or placebo, condition was also included. This type of noninvasive neural stimulation enhances cortical activity by boosting the spontaneous activity of neurons. Foreign vocabulary acquisition was tested both immediately and seven days after the stimulation. We found that stimulation on the posterior parietal, but not the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or sham stimulation, significantly improved the memory performance in the long term. These results suggest that the posterior parietal cortex is directly involved in acquisition of foreign vocabulary, thus extending the "linguistic network" to this area.
Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Article Number: 671705
Subjects: Q Science > Q Science (General)
Divisions: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences > Academic programs > Cultural Studies
Depositing User: Achille Pasqualotto
Date Deposited: 21 Aug 2015 11:30
Last Modified: 02 Aug 2019 16:27
URI: https://research.sabanciuniv.edu/id/eprint/27039

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