Using Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) and structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), we have been examining the brain anatomical features when early language experience is severely impoverished. We found decreased connectivity in left arcuate fasciculus, a fiber bundle connecting Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area (Cheng et al. 2019). In a different study, we found that a number of core language-relevant regions, including the left Broca’s and the left Middle Temporal Gyrus, showed reduced volume and/or cortical thickness, as a function of longer delay in ASL onset (Cheng et al. 2023).

Cheng, Q., Roth, A., Halgren, E., Klein, D., Chen, J. K., & Mayberry, R. I. (2023). Restricted language access during childhood affects adult brain structure in selective language regions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(7), e2215423120. [open access link] [SNL poster]

Cheng, Q., Roth, A., Halgren, E., & Mayberry, R. I. (2019). Effects of early language deprivation on brain connectivity: Language pathways in deaf native and late first-language learners of American Sign Language. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 13, 320. [open access link][SNL poster]