Brain-structural differences underlying dialect competence in the bilingual network.

Overview

1. Research Group Phonetics, Institute of German Linguistics, Marburg University,Marburg, Germany
2. Research Center Deutscher Sprachatlas, Marburg University,Marburg, Germany
3. Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior (CMBB), Universities of Gießen and Marburg,Marburg, Germany
4. Core-Facility Brain Imaging, Faculty of Medicine, Marburg University,Marburg, Germany
5. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Marburg University,Marburg, Germany

Abstract

Research in multilingualism has provided evidence for brain structural differences between monolinguals and bilinguals. Less is known about speakers who, apart from a standard language, also show competence in a variety (dialect) of this language (“bidialectals”). In these populations, cultural differences are minimized and language competence can be compared against a common ground. We hypothesize that bidialectals show brain-structural differences to non-bidialectals, and capitalize on one of the world’s largest dialect corpus available for German. A competent dialect group (N = 26) and a group without dialect competence (N = 23) were compared by using brain structural measures, including gray matter volume (GMV) and cortical thickness (CT). Results demonstrate a whole-brain group difference, seen for CT in right orbitofrontal cortex, and for GMV in bilateral middle temporal gyrus and bilateral insula. Notably, CT in right fusiform cortex as well as GMV in bilateral middle temporal gyrus and right insula co-varied with dialect competence differently for the two groups. The structural differences and covariations with dialect competence are discussed on the background of code switching and language control. The findings suggest that dialect competence may shape brain structure in ways similar to bilingualism.

Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-026-59884-y.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Data

Datasets cited

• osf:64d9w, at OSF; found in “Data availability”

Data availability

The datasets generated during and analyzed during the current study are available in the following osf-archive: (10.17605/OSF.IO/64D9W) Further analyzes, tables and figures are available in the Supplementary Information (SI).

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Version 1, 27 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 4 authors, 7 keywords, 9 MeSH terms, 1 funder, 70 references.

Cite

This paper

Scharinger, M., Schmidt, J. E., Sommer, J., & Jansen, A. (2026). Brain-structural differences underlying dialect competence in the bilingual network. Scientific reports, 16(1), 20055. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-59884-y

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