The bilingual brain: Plasticity and processing from cradle to grave by Manuel Carreira

The bilingual brain: Plasticity and processing from cradle to grave by Manuel Carreira (Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain IKERBASQUE. Basque Foundation for Science. Bilbao. Spain)

Most people either learn more than one language from birth or invest quite a lot of time and effort learning a second language. Bilingualism and second language learning is an interesting case for investigating cognitive and brain plasticity. In this talk I will describe behavioral and neuroimaging evidence on the cognitive and brain mechanisms adults and infants (monlinguals, bilinguals and second language learners) use for processing language. In particular I will address whether proficient second language learners use similar or different brain mechanisms during processing and what are the neural consequences (structural and functional) of dealing with two languages.