The Bilingual Brain

Introduction

Studying bilingual’s brain has been an area of interest to many psychologists. The complexity of the human brain and how it reacts when the person is producing words in different languages is really interesting to many people. Psychologist had used different hemodynamic measures such as PET, fMRI and MRI to follow the active parts of the brain used by bilinguals and by monolinguals.

The bilingual’s brain reacts in a different manner than monolingual’s brain. The reactions and the responses from bilinguals also depend on the age when they first learn their second language. When a bilingual person learns a second language since he was born or when he was really young this person is considered an early bilingual. On the other hand,

if the person learns the language on the adolescence or later in life is considered to be a late bilingual. Psychologists have been testing bilinguals and monolinguals to know if they will score the same or different on many task. Psychologist found out that bilinguals and monolinguals score different.
According to Kovelman (2008) Bilinguals have more have more brain activity when having conversations on their second language than monolinguals having conversations on their native language. The frontal cortex is one section of the brain that bilinguals use the most. This part on the brain is in charge of control the language and speak better on each one of their languages that they speak. The frontal cortex controls the interference of other language not used while bilinguals are answering a test, or while speaking formally in just one language.

Early Bilinguals
The capacity humans have to learn many languages since the day they are born is the same in every person even if they are just exposed to one language.

The influences in a bilingual family give children exposure to the correct way of speaking both languages. They are thought to express themselves in both ways and their parents teach them the right form of speaking. The main part is not only what their parents teach their children, but the exposure to the languages. This means that the more contact with people speaking more than one language the better chances they can recall that information.

Since they are young, bilinguals are expected to know how to differentiate one language form the other, if they cannot notice the differences between both languages they can have problems speaking correctly. The differentiation between languages is call language discrimination. According to Costa & Gallanes (2014), every human being should have this ability, but there are many studies that show that monolinguals more easily discriminate the unknown language than bilinguals. This happens because they are just exposed to one language and have just one lexicon learned. Bilinguals on the other hand, have two different set of rules for both languages, and it takes longer to the brain

discriminate.
Studies had shown that when someone is an early bilingual have an interdependent memory, while late bilinguals have a dependent memory. This means that early bilinguals learned to associate the words of both languages since they were little. According to Gallanes, Rodrieguez, Balaguer, & Diaz (2006), they have a memory in which if someone ask them to do a task of identifying words on language 1 and language 2 the amount of time spend on that will be almost the same in both languages. While late bilinguals have the two lexicons on two parts one for L1 and another for L2 they need more time to relate or to search each word in both languages.
Late bilingual
Late bilinguals are people who start learning their second language after adolescence. The age of the individual who is leaning another language is crucial. When someone old is learning a new language, the proficiency will not be de same as a native speaker. According to Kalia, Willburn, & Ghio (2015), by the time late bilinguals learn their second language their first language has already being develop, creating their lexical, sematic and syntactic network.
Late bilinguals develop their first language as their only language before learning another one. The first language becomes their dominant language and the one they choose more for formal situations and for their daily use. Their memory is now independent, this means that their memories for both languages are archived separate. For example if on one task the psychologist ask a late bilingual to think just in one language and then in few seconds he ask the same person to think in the other language the reaction time will be longer than an early bilingual. This happens because they have to search on two different parts of the brain, while the early bilinguals usually have their memories shared.
Conclusions
A bilingual’s brain uses more and different parts of the brain than monolinguals.

The frontal cortex helps them control their languages to just use the one they are looking for. The age in which bilinguals learn their second language is crucial to the fluency of the language. Early bilinguals are more likely to speak fluently in both languages because they learned the second language when they were developing their brain. The late bilinguals take longer to choose between languages because their first language is more developed than the second one.

Psychologists are interested on learning the differences between monolinguals, and early and late bilinguals. According to Rodriguez-Fornells (2005), the fMRI shows the different active parts of the brain while developing a picture naming task. The bilingual’s brain is very active and this is why there are many benefits of being a bilingual person. One of the benefits of having the brain active all the time is to prevent many brain dysfunctions. This topic is perfect to do many research and prove how beneficial is to the individuals being bilingual or being

monolingual.