Thinking outside the box: The brain-bilingualism relationship in the light of early neurobiological variability

• Published in: Brain and language 2020-12, Vol.211, p.104879-104879, Article 104879
• Main Authors: Del Maschio, Nicola, Sulpizio, Simone, Abutalebi, Jubin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bilingualism; Brain; Brain - diagnostic imaging; Brain - physiology; Brain anatomy; Brain Mapping - methods; Brain-behavior relationship; Cognition; Cognition - physiology; Humans; Language; Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Multilingualism; Neurobiology; Neuroimaging - methods; Neurolinguistics; Structural MRI; Structure-leading-function; Sulcal pattern; Thinking - physiology
• ISSN: 0093-934X; 1090-2155
• DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2020.104879

•Bilingualism offers an elegant model to investigate brain-behavior mappings.•Past research has focused on how the brain adapts to a bilingual environment.•We present a recent contribution to the cognitive neuroscience of bilingualism.•Bilingual experience modulates the impact of brain structure on cognition.•We highlight the need to shape more complex questions for progress in the field. Bilingualism represents a distinctive way to investigate the interplay between brain and behaviour, and an elegant model to study the role of environmental factors in shaping this relationship. Past neuroimaging research has mainly focused on how bilingualism influences brain structure, and how eventually the brain accommodates a second language. In this paper, we discuss a more recent contribution to the field which views bilingualism as lens to understand brain-behaviour mappings from a different perspective. It has been shown, in contexts not related to bilingualism, that cognitive performance across several domains can be predicted by neuroanatomical variants determined prenatally and largely impervious to postnatal changes. Here, we discuss novel findings indicating that bilingualism modulates the predictive role of these variants on domain-specific cognition. The repercussions of these findings are potentially far-reaching on multiple levels, and highlight the need to shape more complex questions for progress in cognitive neuroscience approaches to bilingualism.