Trial reportProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2019
Redefining bilingualism as a spectrum of experiences that differentially affects brain structure and function.
Trial report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 134 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
134 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Multifactorial approaches to study bilingualism in the aging population: Past, present, future.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Pooled it
- The Bilingual Advantage in Children's Executive Functioning Is Not Related to Language Status: A Meta-Analytic Review.Psychological science · 2021Pooled it
- Bilingualism Is Associated with a Delayed Onset of Dementia but Not with a Lower Risk of Developing it: a Systematic Review with Meta-Analyses.Neuropsychology review · 2020Pooled it
- The Impact of Bilingualism on Executive Functions in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review Based on the PRISMA Method.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Pooled it
- The Effect of AoA-L2 on Functional Network Dynamics in Bilinguals.Brain topography · 2026Article
- Age of Language Acquisition Affects Topology of Brain White Matter Network: A Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- Reported symptoms and patterns of language impairment in bilingual speakers with primary progressive aphasia: a retrospective study.Aphasiology · 2026Article
- Limited protective effects of multilingualism against age-related cognitive decline.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- The modulating role of memory load on language switching in sentence comprehension: evidence from eye movements.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Modulations of the P3b effect as a function of bilingual language experience.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Does bilingualism buffer genetic predispositions to reading difficulties through alterations of structural interhemispheric connectivity? An ABCDbioRxiv : 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
- Neural signatures of word learning: How individual differences shape ERPs and oscillations in the early stages of learning a new language.Neuropsychologia · 2026Article
- Missing the Mix: Perceiving Code-Switches as a Mechanism for Bilingual Adaptation.Child development perspectives · 2026Article
- Not just two languages: Using variation in language experience to understand how cognitive resources shape syntactic processing.PloS one · 2026Article
- Bilingual effects on cognitive control: a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 50 years of research.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Selective cognitive effects of multilingualism emerge in visuospatial working memory in later life.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Language switching ability and executive function development in English learners: a longitudinal investigation of bilingual cognitive control.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Multilingualism protects against accelerated aging in cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of 27 European countries.Nature aging · 2025Article
- A multilingual guide to slowing aging.Nature aging · 2025Article
74 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Learning and using an additional language is shown to have an impact on the structure and function of the brain, including in regions involved in cognitive control and the connections between them. However, the available evidence remains variable in terms of the localization, extent, and trajectory of these effects. Variability likely stems from the fact that bilingualism has been routinely operationalized as a categorical variable (bilingual/monolingual), whereas it is a complex and dynamic experience with a number of potentially deterministic factors affecting neural plasticity. Here we present a study investigating the combined effects of experience-based factors (EBFs) in bilingual language use on brain structure and functional connectivity. EBFs include an array of measures of everyday usage of a second language in different types of immersive settings (e.g., amount of use in social settings). Analyses reveal specific adaptations in the brain, both structural and functional, correlated to individual EBFs and their combined effects. Taken together, the data show that the brain adapts to be maximally efficient in the processing and control of two languages, although modulated ultimately by individual language experience.
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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.