According to embodied theories, motor and language processing bidirectionally interact: Motor activation modulates behavior in lexico-semantic tasks (semantic resonance), and understanding motor-related words entails activation of the corresponding motor brain areas (motor resonance). Whereas many studies investigated such interaction in the first language (L1), only few did so in a second language (L2), focusing on motor resonance. Here, we directly compared L1 and a late L2, for the first time both in terms of semantic and motor resonance and both in terms of magnitude and timing, by taking advantage of single-pulse TMS. Twenty-five bilinguals judged, in each language, whether hand motor-related ("grasp") and non-motor-related verbs ("believe"), were physical or mental. Meanwhile, we applied TMS on the hand motor cortex at 125, 275, 350, and 500 msec post verb onset, and recorded behavioral responses and TMS-induced motor evoked potentials. TMS induced faster responses for L1 versus L2 motor and nonmotor verbs at 125 msec (three-way interaction β = -0.0442, 95% CI [0.0814, -0.0070]), showing a semantic resonance effect at an early stage of word processing in L1 but not in L2. Concerning motor resonance, TMS-induced motor evoked potentials at 275 msec revealed higher motor cortex excitability for L2 versus L1 processing (two-way interaction β = 0.095, 95% CI [0.017, 0.173]). These findings confirm action-language interaction at early stages of word recognition, provide further evidence that L1 and L2 are differently embodied, and call for an update of existing models of bilingualism and embodiment, concerning both language representations and processing.

中文翻译：

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手头的第一和第二语言：语义和运动共振的计时经颅磁刺激研究。

根据具体化理论，运动和语言处理是双向交互的：运动激活调节词汇语义任务（语义共振）中的行为，理解运动相关词需要激活相应的运动大脑区域（运动共振）。许多研究在第一语言 (L1) 中调查了这种交互，但只有少数研究在第二语言 (L2) 中进行了研究，重点是运动共振。在这里，我们利用单脉冲 TMS 直接比较了 L1 和晚期 L2，这是第一次在语义和运动共振以及幅度和时间方面进行比较。25 名双语者在每种语言中判断手部运动相关（“掌握”）和非运动相关动词（“相信”）是身体上的还是精神上的。同时，我们在动词开始后 125、275、350 和 500 毫秒对手部运动皮层应用 TMS，并记录行为反应和 TMS 诱导的运动诱发电位。TMS 在 125 毫秒时对 L1 相对于 L2 运动和非运动动词的反应更快（三向交互 β = -0.0442, 95% CI [0.0814, -0.0070]），在 L1 文字处理的早期阶段显示出语义共振效应但不是在 L2 中。关于运动共振，TMS 诱导的 275 毫秒运动诱发电位显示 L2 与 L1 处理相比具有更高的运动皮层兴奋性（双向相互作用 β = 0.095，95% CI [0.017, 0.173]）。这些发现证实了单词识别早期阶段的动作语言交互，进一步证明 L1 和 L2 具有不同的体现，并呼吁更新现有的双语和体现模型，