NEWS AND VIEWS

Whats in control of language?

Angela D Friederici

2006 Nature Publishing Group http://www.nature.com/natureneuroscience

Language functions are thought to be controlled largely by cortical areas. A study now finds that the subcortical caudate
nucleus is sensitive to language change in bilingual speakers, suggesting a role for this area in control processes.

Anyone who has learned a second language

late in life knows how frustrating it is to search
for a particular word in still-foreign language,
especially when that word is easily remembered in ones native language. Bilinguals,
those lucky people who grew up with two languages or learned their second language early
in life, do not have this problem. Bilinguals
have easy access to words in both their languages, and they can switch between languages
without difficulty.
In a recent study in Science1, Crinion and
colleagues used functional neuroimaging to
investigate how bilinguals accomplish this linguistic feat, and found that the left caudate
is critical for monitoring and controlling the
language in use. The study involved a semantic
priming task in which two written nouns were
presented sequentially, with a short interval
between the first and second words of the
pair. Words were from the same language
(for example, English trout SALMON or
German forelle LACHS) or from different
languages (for German-English bilinguals,
trout LACHS or forelle SALMON). Some
of these word pairs were related, and others
were not. Participants were required to make a
semantic decision on the perceptual properties
of the object only on the second word of the
pair. In monolinguals, the one-language
version of this task usually reveals a decrease
in reaction time and neuronal activation for
semantically related compared to semantically
unrelated second words in a pair. Are there
similar effects in a cross-lingual setting? To
test this, the authors examined three groups:
two groups of German-English bilinguals
(one in a positron emission tomography
(PET) study and one in a functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) study) and a group
of Japanese-English bilinguals. All participants
had learned English as a second language and
had mastered English at different proficiency
levels, according to the behavioral tests
reported in the online material.

The author is at the Max Planck Institute

for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences,
Stephanstr. 1a, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
e-mail: angelafr@cbs.mpg.de

Figure 1 The caudate receives input from the prefrontal premotor, temporal and parietal cortex,
and connects reciprocally to the cortex via the thalamus. Left, neuroanatomical topography in
relation to other brain structures. Right, a principled but simplified view of the connections
between the different brain structures.

The authors found that a common set of

frontal, temporal and parietal regions were
activated by semantic decisions in both languages. However, there were large differences
among the three groups, and it would have
been interesting to learn whether the increased
activation in the fMRI German group was
correlated with the increased response times
observed in this group.
Most relevant for the argument put forward
in the present study, however, is the semantic
priming effect: the reduction in brain activation
to semantically related second words compared
to unrelated second words. The study dissociated two such effects in all three groups tested.
First, activity in the left anterior temporal
pole decreased in proportion to the degree of
semantic relatedness, regardless of whether the
two words were in the same language or not.
This clearly demonstrates that semantic priming of nouns can take place across languages
and suggests overlapping neural representations for nouns in different languages.
In contrast, the left caudate showed the same
semantic priming effect (reduced activation for
the second word of a semantically related word

NATURE NEUROSCIENCE VOLUME 9 | NUMBER 8 | AUGUST 2006

pair), but only when both words were in the

same language. There was no semantic priming across languages for the left caudate. This
pattern was independent of whether the second
word was in the native or the second language.
The left caudate is therefore sensitive to language
change across word pairs, suggesting that it is
critical for language control.
This is a surprising finding because subcortical structures such as the caudate are not viewed
as being primarily involved in conscious cognitive control. In contrast, frontal regions located
in the lateral prefrontal cortex support conscious
cognitive control2,3 and language switching4,5,
but were not activated by the priming task used
in this study.
This may be because priming is a highly
automatic process and may therefore not
involve conscious control even when a language change is involved. This, however, also
suggests that the left caudate is involved, first,
in automatic semantic priming for words
within the same language, as reflected in the
activation reduction, and, second, in a perceptual change between two languages, as reflected
in an activation increase. This twofold

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 2006 Nature Publishing Group http://www.nature.com/natureneuroscience

NEWS AND VIEWS

observation is condensed in the formula that
the left caudate responses are highest when
there is a change in meaning (semantically
unrelated words in a pair) or a change in language (different languages in a pair).
In an attempt to further specify the role
of the left caudate, Crinion et al. refer to two
other imaging studies on word processing in
monolinguals, comparing semantic decisions to
a phonological task6,7, which also found activation in the left caudate. On the combined basis of
these studies, they conclude that the left caudate
responds in general when the pattern of neural
input changes. This conclusion, however, is not
entirely clear, as these two last studies differ from
the present study in that identical words were
presented during semantic and phonological
task blocks, thus eliminating any direct perceptual changes within a short time window.
Moreover, this functional description of
the left caudate cannot easily be generalized
to a number of other fMRI studies that also
found activation in the left caudate. One
study compared monolingual reading of latelearned words to those learned early in life and
observed increased activation in the left caudate8. Another word processing study found
an increase in the left caudate activation for
words compared to pseudowords in monolinguals9 and for translating words from native to
second language compared to reading aloud
words in the native language5. At the sentence
level, increased activation of left caudate has
been observed for processing the second language as compared to the native language
during reading and auditory comprehension
for correct, semantically incorrect and syntactically incorrect sentences1012. Thus, these
studies together suggest that the left caudate is
part of a language network, be it monolingual
or multilingual. At this stage, it is still unclear
whether its specific function is that of controlling the language in use.
Instead, the reviewed studies suggest that
the left caudate activates when the language
processing system cannot rely entirely on
automatic mechanisms but has to recruit
controlled processes as well. This notion can

992

explain the results in the study by Crinion

et al. as well, as more conscious processes are
likely to be recruited across languages compared to processing within the same language.
It is compatible with the finding that, compared to real words, it takes longer to decide
whether a pseudoword (a nonsense letter
string similar to a real word) is a meaningful word or not8. Such lexical decision times
are also slower for words learned later compared to those learned early on9. Moreover,
it is in line with the observation that second
language processing is more demanding than
native language processing1012.
This more general functional description of
the left caudate fits with the suggestion that it
is crucial in controlling and selecting motor
sequences necessary for articulation1,12. This
argument is supported by neuroanatomical
data showing that the left caudate receives projections from prefrontal, temporal and parietal
cortex, and connects reciprocally with the cortex
via the thalamus (Fig. 1). The anterior portion
of the body of the left caudate, the area activated
in the study by Crinion et al., receives dense
projections from the lateral and medial premotor cortex, which is functionally related to the
sequencing and scheduling of compiled motor
routines13. For their own findings, Crinion et al.
suggest that the left caudate is active because of
the differing motor patterns across languages. A
more general account could be that the motorrelated patterns necessary for articulatory
processes are activated during language comprehension whenever comprehension requires
less automatic and more controlled processes. A
number of event-related brain potential studies
support this interpretation by demonstrating a
selective deficit of controlled syntactic processes
as a result of focal lesions of the basal ganglia,
including the left caudate nucleus14,15. The
extent to which controlled processes at the word
and sentence level depend on the articulatory
aspects of language use needs to be tested using
articulatory suppression tasks.
The new data open an exciting view of
the neural basis of language processing by
highlighting the crucial role of subcortical

structures and their possible interplay with

well-known cortical language regions. Though
the data on this topic are still sparse, available
studies suggest that the left caudates function
is not to control the language in use, but rather
to recruit controlled processes when language
processing cannot rely primarily on automatic processes. Such a description of the left
caudates function, which stresses the systems
adaptation to the processing demands rather
than its control over processes, is in accordance
with the functional neuroanatomical view that
control processes are primarily supported by
cortical regions. If this more general functional
description of the left caudate is valid, the
degree to which the language system recruits
controlled rather than automatic processes
will determine the degree to which the left
caudate is activated during language processing. This should hold not only for monolingual
and multilingual adults, but also for children
during language development. Thus the left
caudate may be more involved during language
acquisition compared to adult processing.

1. Crinion, J. et al. Science 312, 15371540 (2006).

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