ArticleBrain structure & function2017
Immersive bilingualism reshapes the core of the brain.
Article in Brain structure & function, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 147 citations in OpenAlex.
- Does bilingualism protect against dementia? A meta-analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2020Pooled it
- Redefining bilingualism as a spectrum of experiences that differentially affects brain structure and function.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Trial
- Are executive function and neuroanatomy in ADHD modulated by bilingualism?bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Rethinking language, cognition and assessment in psychosis: How bilingualism challenges psychiatry and how natural language processing can help.Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2026Review
- Diverse cultural backgrounds influence language aptitude and working memory in adult Chinese language learning.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The Neurodevelopmental Dynamics of Multilingual Experience During Childhood: A Longitudinal Behavioral, Structural, and Functional MRI Study.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Unveiling the neuroplastic capacity of the bilingual brain: insights from healthy and pathological individuals.Brain structure & function · 2024Article
- Neuroanatomy, episodic memory and inhibitory control of persian-kurdish simultaneous bilinguals.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Does Diglossia Impact Brain Structure? Data from Swiss German Early Diglossic Speakers.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- Subcortical and cerebellar volume differences in bilingual and monolingual children: An ABCD study.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2024Article
- Mapping individual aspects of bilingual experience to adaptations in brain structure.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024Article
- Hierarchical neural processing in γ oscillations for syntactic and semantic operations accounts for first- and second-language epistemology.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2024Article
- Dynamic effects of bilingualism on brain structure map onto general principles of experience-based neuroplasticity.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Use of the first-acquired language modulates pupil size in the processing of island constraint violations.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- The effects of bilingualism on hippocampal volume in ageing bilinguals.Brain structure & function · 2022Article
- The neuroanatomical consequences and pathological implications of bilingualism.Journal of anatomy · 2022Review
- Lifelong bilingualism and mechanisms of neuroprotection in Alzheimer dementia.Human brain mapping · 2022Article
- Type of bilingualism conditions individual differences in the oscillatory dynamics of inhibitory control.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Foreign Language Learning in Older Adults: Anatomical and Cognitive Markers of Vocabulary Learning Success.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Dynamic Effects of Immersive Bilingualism on Cortical and Subcortical Grey Matter Volumes.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bilingualism has been shown to affect the structure of the brain, including cortical regions related to language. Less is known about subcortical structures, such as the basal ganglia, which underlie speech monitoring and language selection, processes that are crucial for bilinguals, as well as other linguistic functions, such as grammatical and phonological acquisition and processing. Simultaneous bilinguals have demonstrated significant reshaping of the basal ganglia and the thalamus compared to monolinguals. However, it is not clear whether these effects are due to learning of the second language (L2) at a very young age or simply due to continuous usage of two languages. Here, we show that bilingualism-induced subcortical effects are directly related to the amount of continuous L2 usage, or L2 immersion. We found significant subcortical reshaping in non-simultaneous (or sequential) bilinguals with extensive immersion in a bilingual environment, closely mirroring the recent findings in simultaneous bilinguals. Importantly, some of these effects were positively correlated to the amount of L2 immersion. Conversely, sequential bilinguals with comparable proficiency and age of acquisition (AoA) but limited immersion did not show similar effects. Our results provide structural evidence to suggestions that L2 acquisition continuously occurs in an immersive environment, and is expressed as dynamic reshaping of the core of the brain. These findings propose that second language learning in the brain is a dynamic procedure which depends on active and continuous L2 usage.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.