Bilinguals use the brain differently
Bilingualism is being implemented with force in the education of children in the globalized world in which we live and more and more research is emerging on how this condition affects the brain. The last one is the one that has been carried out at the Jaume I University of Castellón and the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) of Barcelona that publishes the journal Brain & Language.
This research is part of a broader project of the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 program called 'Bilingualism and cognitive neuroscience', a consortium formed by four Spanish universities (Jaume I, Pompeu Fabra, University of Barcelona and University of the Basque Country) that aims to study the neural bases of bilingualism.
How the brain of bilingual people works
Among his main conclusions, he points out that there is no difference between people who speak one language and those who speak two or more languages (in this case Castilian and Catalan) when they listen to their mother tongue, but when they speak it. Thus, monolinguals use the brain areas of language rather than bilinguals, while the latter use more the areas related to language control.
To carry out the research, there were two groups of students: on the one hand, simultaneous bilingual students who from a very early age had Spanish as their preferred language; and on the other, the monolingual students in which Spanish was their native language. All of them had to do two tasks in Spanish, one of denomination based on images and another one of listening to words.
These researchers have observed that "monolingual people have a more efficient use of the typical areas of language, which is complemented by the use of other brain areas." The study has shown that, although the language studied was native and dominant, in the performance of language tasks, bilingual and monolingual people use the brain areas involved differently.
Main differences between bilinguals and monolinguals
1. Monolingual people are slightly faster than bilinguals, when they perform naming tasks.
2. Monolinguals use the brain areas of the language more than bilinguals (like the left middle temporal rotation), while bilinguals use more areas related to language control (such as the posterior cingulate).
3. There are no differences between bilinguals and monolinguals when they hear words.
4. Bilinguals use more brain area related to executive control when they name the images.
5. In the task of listening to words, Bilinguals use more brain areas that are related to the auditory and semantic processing of words.
Marisol New
