Left hemisphere damage in adulthood often leads to linguistic deficits, but many cases of early damage leave linguistic processing preserved, and a functional language system can develop in the right hemisphere. To explain this early apparent equipotentiality of the two hemispheres for language, some have proposed that the language system is bilateral during early development and only becomes left-lateralized with age. We examined language lateralization using functional magnetic resonance imaging with two large pediatric cohorts (total n=273 children ages 4-16; n=107 adults). Strong, adult-level left-hemispheric lateralization (in activation volume and response magnitude) was evident by age 4. Thus, although the right hemisphere can take over language function in some cases of early brain damage, and although some features of the language system do show protracted development (magnitude of language response and strength of inter-regional correlations in the language network), the left-hemisphere bias for language is robustly present by 4 years of age. These results call for alternative accounts of early equipotentiality of the two hemispheres for language.
Keywords: Major: Biological Sciences; Minor: Psychological and Cognitive Sciences; development; fMRI; language; language network; lateralization.