Language reconfiguration in bilinguals: a study with Huntington's disease patients
Abstract
The present study investigated language inhibition and cross-language interference as two possible mechanisms of bilingual language control (BLC) that can be affected by Huntington's disease (HD), a neurodegenerative disease (ND) affecting the striatum. To this aim, the study explored the performance of pre-symptomatic and early-stage HD patients in two experimental tasks meant to elicit cross-language interference and language inhibition, including a Stroop task and a language switching task. The results revealed dissociations between these two mechanisms, indicating that language activation or inhibition is related to HD pathology while cross-language interference is not. Switch costs in HD patients were greater than controls in low-demand control conditions of language switching (longer preparation time), while Stroop effects were similar between the two groups of participants. This result was interpreted as a difficulty in overcoming the excessive inhibition applied to non-target language. The BLC processes related to the striatum and subcortical structures are discussed. ; The research was supported by grants from the Spanish government (PSI2014-52181-P, PSI2014-52210-P and PI17/01885), AEI/FEDER and UE (PSI2017-87784-R), Catalan government (SGR 2009-1521 and 2017SGR268), La Marató de TV3 Foundation (373/C/2014) and European Research Council under the European Community's Seventh Framework (FP7/2007–2013 Cooperation Grant Agreement 613465-AThEME). MC was supported by the postdoctoral Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC2013-14013). JPP was supported by the Juan Rodés Program (JR16/00034) and Instituto de Salud Carlos III (Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad)
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