Bilingual vs monolingual brain4/14/2023 ![]() Unsurprisingly, bilinguals show increased gray matter in many language processing areas of the brain, including the left inferior parietal lobe 5. Gray matter is made up of neuronal cell bodies, so the denser the gray matter, the more neurons it contains. One way speaking multiple languages changes that brain is by increasing the density of gray matter in certain regions of the brain. Interestingly, this enhanced ability to concentrate is stronger in people who became bilingual at a young age.īeing bilingual not only changes how the brain processes language, it also alters the physical structure of the brain. This enhanced executive function applies to tasks other than language processing, enhancing working memory and allowing bilinguals to more rapidly switch their focus from a processed stimulus or task to a new, more relevant one 4. It comes as no surprise then that bilingual children and adults are consistently shown to have increased executive function compared to monolinguals 3, almost certainly due to their constant management of multiple languages. Many of the additional regions recruited by bilinguals for between-language competition, like the prefrontal cortex, are also involved in executive function, a set of skills that gives the brain the ability to concentrate on what is important while ignoring irrelevant information. This recruitment of additional brain regions, including greater use of the right half of the brain, is the bilingual brain’s way of monitoring each language, allowing it to focus on the language currently being spoken while suppressing the other language to prevent the person from speaking in the wrong language at the wrong time. When facing between-language competition, additional brain regions are activated, including the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, caudate, and putamen 2. However, language comprehension in bilinguals is more complicated, involving both words within one language that sound similar (within-language competition) and words from different languages that sound similar (between-language competition). Language comprehension in monolinguals involves areas on the left side of the brain, including the supramarginal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus, regions in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain 2. While switching between languages appears effortless for bilinguals, research shows that their language processing actually recruits more of the brain compared to monolinguals. This workout is only intensified when the brain must keep track of this crucial information for more than one language. Speaking a language really is a whole-brain workout! It must also be able to listen to another person speaking the language and interpret what they are communicating. The brain must be able to remember and produce thousands of words and the sounds they make, then string these words together into sentences. But how does being bilingual (or multilingual) affect the brain?īecause language is so complex, it requires a wide network of brain regions. Now, neuroscience research is showing that the benefits of speaking more than one language extend far beyond the ability to communicate with more people. ![]() While learning one language is difficult enough, roughly half of the world’s population is fluent in two or more languages, and this number is only growing 1. Specific rules exist on many levels, from speech sounds and syllables to grammar and sentence structure, and learning these rules takes years of daily practice to master. Language is an extraordinarily complex tool.
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