5 scientific facts about the bilingual brain that will amaze you

Bilingualism has long since been a topic of curiosity for linguists and laymen alike. Given the linguistic diversity of India, we are no strangers to it. While being able to speak in another language has become second nature to most bilinguals or polyglots, it never fails to surprise monolinguals. The last few decades have seen extensive research in this field. So, for all language enthusiasts out there, here are 5 scientific facts about the bilingual brain that will amaze you!

1.  Not all bilinguals are the same: Bilingualism is extremely heterogeneous. The neurological abilities, parts of the brain used for language representation and even the memory systems used for storing the phonological aspects of the language differ depending on various criteria like the age of acquisition, proficiency, usage, etc. So while two people might be bilinguals, their brains might not necessarily function in the same way, even if they know the same two languages.

2.  Better cognitive control: Bilinguals show different linguistic knowledge representations. Instead of a 1:1 mapping between linguistic forms and meaning, they have a 2:1 mapping since they can avail of two different lexicons. This means that they have twice as many words at their disposal corresponding to the same thing or idea as a monolingual person. For example, pointing to a fist-sized red-skinned fruit, I can call it an apple. But I can also call it ein Apfel. Scientists believe that switching between languages according to situation and need strengthens one’s cognitive control.

3.   Higher Executive Functions: In 2021, Saima Malik-Moraleda, a Spanish-Indian PhD student at MIT, along with Evelina Fedorenko conducted a research concerning the executive function in bilingual people. Our executive functions are primarily linked to the domain general multiple demand (MD) network situated in our brain and include high-level cognitive skills like planning, problem solving, abstract thinking, decision making, etc. It was observed that the MD network showed stronger neural responses to an executive (special working memory) task in bilinguals as compared to monolinguals.

4.  Recovery pattern in multilingual aphasics: Aphasia is the disorder that leads to the deterioration of a person’s ability to comprehend and produce language. Empirical study of bilingual aphasic patients has led us to believe that the language that is not available is not lost, only inhibited. It was observed that patients could recover a language in a lapse of time shorter than that needed to acquire a foreign language. Thus, this disorder, also described as ‘inertia of the cortical language centers’, did not cause loss of language but only made it partially inaccessible in the case of bilinguals.

5.  Neural representation of languages: For bilinguals and polyglots, different languages might not be represented in the same part of the brain. The informally acquired language, mostly the first language is more widely represented in the subcortical structures while, the formally learned second language involves the cerebral cortex. Thus, an aphasic patient with a lesion to the left basal ganglia had completely lost the capacity to express herself in her mother tongue. However, she exhibited exceptional production skills in her second language. A tongue she had mastered only at the rudimentary levels and had never spoken.

While languages outside the mainstream have not yet been studied as extensively, research is still underway and the coming years hold nothing but greater information and discoveries in the field of linguistics. For more language related content, make sure to visit us on LinkedIn and Instagram. Want to learn a new language? Come, let us embark on the journey together!