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Essay that shows argument for and against the multilingual advantage. Shows evidence of two camps arguing. Author attempts to find the advantage since a young age which helps students concentrate better.

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Also explains infants can hold this trait.Helps support work stated by DANA. However, unsure of consensus on how bilingualism actually affects development. "Infants reared in bilingual households often see greater cognitive development. Even very young children who grow up hearing two different languages are able to sort one from the other—a difficult mental task. "

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James A. Garfield ranks among the less remarkable U.S. presidents, owing largely to the fact that he was assassinated just 200 days into his first term. For that reason, Garfield is less remembered for his policy achievements than for his personal quirks.

The president was both bilingual and ambidextrous. It's rumored that he entertained guests by writing in Greek with one hand and Latin with the other simultaneously. Garfield was also known for his wisdom and restraint. "Right reason is stronger than force," he once said. He wasn't the kind to lose his cool.

As it happens, research suggests these characteristics are related-learning a second language can improve self-discipline.

Studies show that bilingualism is associated with better executive function , a term used to describe several higher-order cognitive skills, including the ability to control our own behavior. Executive function allows us to play a game of chess or follow the plot of "Mad Men", but it's best understood as what allows us to make plans, get organized, and stay on task. Learning a new language can help cultivate these skills.

"I speak Korean and English," says Yang Hwajin, a professor of psychology at Singapore Management University. "When I speak English, I have to inhibit thoughts about Korean grammar and focus on English grammar, as the two languages do not share any grammatical structure. Speaking these two languages has trained me to inhibit distractions and focus better."

This skill, known as task switching, is related to executive function. To do it well, one ought to focus on one task (speaking English) and then another (speaking Korean), ideally without jumbling words or syntax between the two different languages. This entails working in one mode and then the other.

Infants reared in bilingual households often see greater cognitive development . Even very young children who grow up hearing two different languages are able to sort one from the other-a difficult mental task. These benefits are apparent as children continue to grow and evolve. Students in dual-language classrooms, for example, tend to perform better in some areas in school.

"What we have found in the last three decades is that bilingualism has substantial impact on cognitive function-the way that we think, make decisions, perceive things, solve decisions, and so on," Hwajin says.

It's worth noting that some of this research is contested . Scientists have yet to reach a consensus on how bilingualism shapes cognitive development, but they generally agree that learning a new language is a workout for the brain. And this reaps measurable benefits well into old age.

Learning a new language tones the brain by strengthening neural networks. While some parts of the brain control a specific task-the visual cortex processes sight, the auditory cortex processes sound-there is no part of the brain that specifically controls language.

Speaking a language-even just one language-is such a complex task that it engages the entire brain. One must understand the meaning of thousands of words, the way they fit together, and the cultural context that offer weight and meaning. These processes must happen simultaneously and in conjunction, each a moving part in a complex machine. Learning a new language tightens the gears.

Bilingual seniors tend to stay sharp as they age, are more likely to recover from a stroke , and have shown signs of dementia and Alzheimer's four or five years later than their monolingual peers. The bilingual brain features stronger connections between disparate parts, allowing bilingual seniors to harness resiliency others may lack.

These benefits are immensely valuable, and speaking additional languages can come in handy. It allows you to communicate with a wider range of people, navigate other parts of the world, and better understand different cultures. It's useful anywhere, from the bodega to the boardroom. More than half the population is onto this .

"One language sets you in a corridor for life," says psycholinguist Frank Smith. "Two languages open every door along the way."

Artwork by CHRIS MARKLAND/SHANNON MOSS

By day, Jeremy writes about climate and energy for Nexus Media. His work has appeared on Popular Science, Business Insider, ThinkProgress, and Grist. By night, he is a recovering musician, avid runner, and guacamole connoisseur. You can follow him @deaton_jeremy.

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How being bilingual strengthens our brains

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James A. Garfield ranks among the less remarkable U.S. presidents, owing largely to the fact that he was assassinated just 200 days into his first term. For that reason, Garfield is less remembered for his policy achievements than for his personal quirks. The president was both bilingual and ambidextrous.

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Image showing the brain lobes and difference in structure from young. Makes my research clearer when I mention from childhood. This supports growing up multilingual rather than learning a language at a later age.

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In an interview with Dr. Noelle Lopez, she strongly suggested that having a second language does not actually help us improve our executive functions. She first explains that she used to study under a professor called Dr. Kenneth Paap who has published articles on how bilingualism have no advantage. Even so, she reminds that she studies towards stereotype threats, rather than the brain itself. Next she presents that language that are similar are much easier to pick up. She adds on that bilingual people are more collective, compared to monolinguals who are more individualistic. She believed that the test shown could have been other factors disguised as bilingualism. So, she suggest that the test should be more focused towards classrooms or be more descriptive as my answers are too general. However, at the end, she introduces me to Dr. Ellen Bialystok who argues that there is benefits. She just believes that having multiple language means constantly switching and translating, which is more taxing towards the brain.

Complete disagreement with me with facts and proof. Make me rethink my paper. Teaches me more detailed work. Help me show disagreement.

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Takes developing students as main subject, stating multilingual score better due to ability to switch. Famous professor that supports my thesis. " Language proficiency predicted performance on metalinguistic tasks, but the length of time spent in the immersion program predicted performance on nonverbal executive function tasks. Thus, for both adults and children, the bilingual advantage in nonverbal executive function emerges with more bilingual experience "

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Other side of the argument that goes against my thesis and argues against Dr. Ellen Bialystok. This is the main point that goes against my paper. "The hypothesis that coordinating multiple languages enhances behavioral measures of EF remains contentious. Skepticism is warranted because studies using multiple measures of EF, large numbers of participants, and highly fluent bilinguals usually report no differences at all. "

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The hypothesis that coordinating two or more languages leads to an enhancement in executive functioning has been intensely studied for the past decade with very mixed results. The purpose of this review and analysis is to consider why it has been (and will continue to be) difficult to discover the brain mechanisms underlying any cognitive benefits to bilingualism.

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Tests carried out on monolinguals and bilingual, proving there is no advantage. Wanted to show that people disagree with having advantages as multilinguals. No quotes preferred as it is only a short abstract.

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No compelling evidence for a bilingual advantage in switching or that frequent language switching reduces switch cost

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Participants completed three cued-switching tasks, responded to two category-fluency probes, two letter-fluency probes, and two probes to alternate between two targets. Correlations across the three cued-switching tasks were significant for both switching costs and mixing costs. The bilingual advantage hypothesis was tested both by forming language groups and treating bilingualism as a continuous variable.

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Seeks to find underlying factors. For me to show that there is more research needed and examples of test that failed. "there was no consistent evidence supporting the hypotheses that either early bilingualism, highly fluent balanced bilingualism, or trilingualism enhances inhibitory control, monitoring or switching."

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Paap and Greenberg concluded that there is no coherent evidence for bilingual advantages in executive processing. More optimistic researchers believe that the advantages may be restricted to certain types of bilinguals. Recent large-scale and lifespan investigations that tested highly fluent bilinguals from communities where the same two languages are spoken by most residents reported no bilingual advantages in any age group or in any of the tasks used to measure executive functioning. The present study takes a complementary approach by examining a sample that is quite homogeneous in terms of current life experiences, but heterogeneous in terms of its exposure to second languages. The composite database of 168 bilinguals and 216 monolinguals is used to explore for differences based on: (1) the age of acquiring a second language (L2), (2) the relative proficiency of an L2 and (3) the number of languages used. Across 12 different measures of executive function, derived from 4 different nonverbal tasks, there was no consistent evidence supporting the hypotheses that either early bilingualism, highly fluent balanced bilingualism, or trilingualism enhances inhibitory control, monitoring or switching. In fact, when statistically significant effects did occur, they more often disconfirmed than confirmed these hypotheses.

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Are bilingual advantages dependent upon specific tasks or specific bilingual experiences?

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Paap and Greenberg concluded that there is no coherent evidence for bilingual advantages in executive processing. More optimistic researchers believe that the advantages may be restricted to certain types of bilinguals.

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Introduces challenges to finding advantages and argues there is no advantage. I wonder if there are other factors involved, which shows that there is more research to be done. "Figure 1 shows the mean search time (for each group) as a function of the number of distractors for target-present and target-absent trials. Visual inspection confirms that there are no trends favoring bilingual advantages in search time."

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Introduction to difference in brain structure when learning language since young. Main point in my thesis about growing up mutlilingual and supports that a child's brain becomes more efficient , leading to better cognitive usage. " Growing up in a multilingual environment in early childhood may change the individual’s cortical structure, enforcing it to generally build more efficient synaptic networks for language processing."

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Department of Social Psychology and Social Neuroscience, Institute of Psychology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Medical Image Analysis Centre, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Basel, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Division of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Department of Biomedicine, Institute of Anatomy, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Numerous structural studies have established that experience shapes and reshapes the brain throughout a lifetime. The impact of early development, however, is still a matter of debate. Further clues may come from studying multilinguals who acquired their second language at different ages. We investigated adult multilinguals who spoke three languages fluently, where the third language was learned in classroom settings, not before the age of 9 years. Multilinguals exposed to two languages simultaneously from birth (SiM) were contrasted with multinguals who acquired their first two languages successively (SuM). Whole brain voxel based morphometry revealed that, relative to SuM, SiM have significantly lower gray matter volume in several language-associated cortical areas in both hemispheres: bilaterally in medial and inferior frontal gyrus, in the right medial temporal gyrus and inferior posterior parietal gyrus, as well as in the left inferior temporal gyrus. Thus, as shown by others, successive language learning increases the volume of language-associated cortical areas. In brains exposed early on and simultaneously to more than one language, however, learning of additional languages seems to have less impact. We conclude that - at least with respect to language acquisition - early developmental influences are maintained and have an effect on experience-dependent plasticity well into adulthood.

Introduction

In recent years, numerous studies on neuronal plasticity have established that training results in structural changes in critically involved cortical brain areas. On a macroscopic level, it has been shown that gray matter (GM) density and GM volume are altered after different kinds of training (for review see Taubert et al., 2010 and Zatorre et al., 2012). Within the domain of neurolinguistics too, ongoing research has demonstrated that acquiring a second language (L2) has a substantial influence on the anatomy of the brain ( Li et al., 2014; Stein et al., 2014). This was the case for a variety of language characteristics, such as non-native speech sounds ( Golestani et al., 2002, 2007, 2011; Crinion et al., 2006; Wong et al., 2008), acquisition of vocabulary ( Grogan et al., 2009, 2012; Hosoda et al., 2013), reading skills ( Cummine and Boliek, 2013; Zhang et al., 2013), syntax abilities ( Nauchi and Sakai, 2009; Pliatsikas et al., 2014) and executive language control ( Elmer et al., 2011; Filippi et al., 2011; Abutalebi et al., 2012, 2013b; Zou et al., 2012). In addition to these studies on specific characteristics of L2 acquisition, research has also been devoted to overall second language proficiency ( Amunts et al., 2004; Coggins et al., 2004; Mechelli et al., 2004; Osterhout et al., 2008; Mårtensson et al., 2012; Mohades et al., 2012; Ressel et al., 2012; Schlegel et al., 2012; Stein et al., 2012; García-Pentón et al., 2014; Klein et al., 2014), i.e., to a broad level of L2 proficiency as assessed by overall linguistic testing or by simply comparing groups of bilinguals to groups of monolinguals ( Stein et al., 2014; Winkler, unpublished master thesis). Anatomical studies in bilinguals are based on the investigation of GM density changes (e.g., Mechelli et al., 2004; Osterhout et al., 2008; Stein et al., 2012), cortical thickness (e.g., Mårtensson et al., 2012; Klein et al., 2014), and GM volume (e.g., Golestani et al., 2007; Wong et al., 2008). In language-associated areas and, in particular, in areas implicated in control, these studies have generally found alterations due to L2 acquisition, that increase with growing L2 proficiency (for a review, see Li et al., 2014; Stein et al., 2014). Most recently, there have been morphometric studies suggesting that the consequences of bilingualism are related to the form of bilingualism, including not only the age of acquisition and proficiency, but also the context in which the two or more languages are used, i.e., whether speakers are immersed in the language environment, whether they learned the language in a classroom setting and so forth (see the current Special issue).

Neuroscientific studies with multilingual participants, i.e., with subjects speaking at least three languages fluently, are not carried out very often. Only recently, Abutalebi et al. (2013a) combined functional and structural MRI to examine the role of the basal ganglia in multilingual participants. Because of the permanent exposure to a major articulatory load when speaking several languages during a lifetime, the authors hypothesized that there is an enlarged density of gray matter in this area in multilinguals. Indeed, as compared to monolinguals, participants speaking three languages demonstrated increased GM density in the left putamen, which supports the notion of structural plasticity as result of handling a complex articulatory repertoire. In order to compare high cognitive, linguistic, and articulatory demands between multilinguals of two different sorts, namely professional multilingual interpreters versus control multilinguals, Elmer et al. (2014) conducted GM volume analysis on regions previously shown to support language control and executive functions in multilinguals. Interestingly, GM volume was found to be reduced in highly trained multilingual interpreters in a number of regions associated with language control, which suggests that intense training can result in more efficient neural networks, probably due to the pruning of superfluous connections.

Most of the research on the (co)-organization of several languages in the brains of multilinguals has been conducted by using functional brain imaging. Vingerhoets et al. (2003) demonstrated that - in multilinguals with comparable levels of proficiency - late L2 acquisition results in greater activation in L2 than in L1 ( Vingerhoets et al., 2003; also shown by Perani et al., 2003; Wartenburger et al., 2003; Kovelman et al., 2008 in bilinguals). In quadrilingual subjects, although there was no clear association between the age of acquisition and the amount of activation, a negative correlation was found between the level of proficiency and the amount of activation ( Briellmann et al., 2004). This was also suggested by the data of Abutalebi et al. (2013b) in trilinguals. Bloch et al. (2009) focused on the relation between the age of L2 acquisition and the variability of regional brain activation in Broca's and Wernicke's areas in subjects speaking at least three languages fluently and where the L3 had been learned after the age of 9 years. They demonstrated that variability in the representation of the three languages of the individual is related to the age of acquisition of L2, which indicates that early exposure to more than one language gives rise to a language processing network that can accommodate late learned languages.

The present study is based on the work of Bloch et al. (2009) and analyses structural MRI data of subjects fluent in at least three languages. The design of the study allowed us to search for structural differences between simultaneous and successive acquisition of L2. Thus, we suppose that simultaneous (SiM) versus successive or sequential acquisition of L1 and L2 (SuM) is associated with differences in the structural organization of brain areas subserving language processing. More precisely, we hypothesize that groups who acquired L2 later also show higher GM volumes in language-associated regions, as well as in other brain areas belonging to the extended language network ( Ferstl et al., 2008). The design of the study provides us, further, with the opportunity to consider the potential role of the late L3 acquired by all participants. Structural differences between simultaneous (SiM) and successive multilinguals (SuMs) could indicate that very early acquired characteristics are maintained over a long period of life.

Materials and Methods

Subjects

Forty-four healthy, right-handed [verified by the outcome of the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory ( Oldfield, 1971)], non-smoking multilinguals voluntarily participated in this study after receiving information about the investigation and the scanning process and giving their written informed consent. The subjects' average age at MRI acquisition was 28 years (range 18-37 years) and their female/male ratio was 22/22. The Ethics Committee of the University Hospital of Basel (EKBB, Switzerland) approved the study and confirmed its compliance with all relevant regulatory standards. All subjects were fluent and of medium to high proficiency in at least three languages (see Table 1). They did not differ with respect to their acquisition of their L3, which was comparable within all groups, and acquired at 9 years of age or later at school (see Bloch et al., 2009).

TABLE 1. Language and proficiency profile of the 44 participants.
Assessment of Language Profiles

The multilinguals' age of second language acquisition was defined after analyzing each individual's language biography ( Schütze, 1988; Schwabe, 2003) through oral interviews lasting 2-3 h. These in-depth linguistic biographies are based on the observation that free narrations give a more realistic account of the language history of the participant ( Franceschini, 2002). The subjects could then be classified into four different groups of L2 acquisition: 16 ( F = 10) simultaneous bilinguals, 8 ( F = 3) covert simultaneous bilinguals, 8 ( F = 3) sequential bilinguals, and 12 ( F = 6) late multilinguals ( Bloch et al., 2009). For the purpose of the present study, we re-grouped the participants into two groups:

(1) The simultaneous multilingual (SiM) group ( N = 24; F = 13; average age: 27.7 years; age range: 18-36 years) consisting of simultaneous bilinguals, i.e., participants growing up in a bilingual family, where both parents/caregivers spoke different languages, and covert simultaneous bilinguals, i.e., participants growing up in a monolingual family whose language differed from that of the surroundings. This group of bilinguals was exposed to the L2 by the environment parallel to the L1, and for that reason they were grouped together with the simultaneous bilingual group.

(2) The successive multilingual (SuM) group ( N = 20; F = 9; average age: 27.8 years; age range: 20-37 years) comprised successive bilinguals who had acquired their L2 subsequently to L1 between their second and fifth year of life, and late multilinguals who had acquired L2 at school when they were at least 9 years of age. Thus, this group covers multilinguals who acquired their L2 at a distinct time point after the acquisition of their L1.

Table 1 shows information on the multilingual profiles of the SiM and SuM groups. Additionally, it gives information about the type of L2 immersion. The level of competence in the individual languages was scaled by self-assessment, using the Common European Reference Framework for Languages (CERR, North, 2000; Council of Europe, 2001). Calculations using the Mann-Whitney U Test revealed no significant differences between SiM and SuM concerning L2 and L3 proficiency ( p > 0.05, one-tailed).

Language Immersion Profile

As the age of acquisition is not the sole or exclusive influence to alter the structure of the brain, we provide here some additional, post hoc information on the degree of immersion to L2 in our two groups of participants. Immersion has been shown to affect the brain's anatomy ( Pliatsikas et al., 2015) and can be defined as the amount of naturalistic exposure, or immersion, that the speakers receive to that language. It is the degree to which language learners are exposed in their day-to-day activities, (see Pliatsikas and Chondrogianni, 2015).

This study was conducted in the German speaking part of Switzerland. This resulted in the recruited participants having significant exposure to German (the exceptions are subjects 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24 of the SiM group who either acquired Standard German in classroom circumstances as L3 after the age of 9 years or who did not report speaking German at all or learned it as an L4; and subjects 35, 39 and 42 of the SuM group who acquired Standard German in classroom circumstances as L2, see Table 1). Growing up in a German-speaking country makes the context for the acquisition of the L2 - in the cases when Standard German/Swiss German was learned as an L2 - one of early and high immersion by context (due to the linguistic dominance of the environment), or, in the case of the covert simultaneous-participants, a context of medium-high immersion. Similarly, growing up in a German speaking country with at least one caregiver speaking another language than German makes L2 acquisition of high immersion by family. Thus the majority of the members of SiM acquired their L2 by high immersion by family/context or medium-to-high immersion by context. The majority of the members of the SuM group learned L2 in a classroom setting. The subgroup of multilinguals classified as "2nd to 5th year" of age spent a period of their childhood/youth outside a German speaking country or moved to a German-speaking context. Their level of immersion to L2 is thus either high by context (2 out of 8) or temporary high by context (6 out of 8). Therefore, the quality of immersion differs between SiM and SuM (Table 1).

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

MR Image Acquisition

Magnetic resonance images of the 44 subjects were acquired on a 1.5-T Magnetom Vision MRI Scanner (Siemens, Erlangen, Germany) at the University Hospital of Basel. We used a standard head coil to restrict head movements and to limit motion artifacts. A three dimensional (3D) T ₁-weighted anatomical high-resolution Magnetization Prepared Rapid Gradient Echo (MPRAGE) sequence was applied with repetition time of 9.7 ms, echo time of 4 ms, inversion time of 300 ms, and isotopic spatial resolution 1 mm × 1 mm × 1 mm (see also Bloch et al., 2009). The scans were all screened for major radiological abnormalities or visual artifacts by an experienced neuroradiologist.

Voxel-Based Morphometry

These MRI data were analyzed on commercially available Intel-based desktop computers with a Debian Linux 3.1 operating system. The structural images were pre-processed using a Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM8) toolbox, as implemented in the Statistical Parametric Mapping software package. The data were registered with "Diffeomorphic Anatomical Registration Through Exponentiated Lie" (DARTEL) within VBM8, running under the MATLAB 7.11.0 (R2010b) environment ( Members of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, 2009). Accuracy and sensitivity were maximized by creating a study-specific template and segmentation of each subject's image ( Yassa and Stark, 2009). We conducted the following steps: (1) checking for scanner artifacts and major anatomical abnormalities for each subject; (2) aligning and reorientating the scans; (3) using New Segmentation and high-dimensional normalization DARTEL ( Ashburner, 2007); (4) checking for homogeneity across the sample; and (5) using 8 mm standard smoothing ( Bailey, 2008). The default values for realignment, warping, and normalization were used ( Kurth et al., 2010). Finally, realigned, segmented, normalized, and smoothed data were subjected to statistical analysis.

Of the 44 samples of this study two were outliers, with a mean covariance below 2 SDs. Repeated analyses without these two subjects did not change the results (not shown). We therefore decided to retain these two subjects.

Statistics

Voxel-based morphometry compares images on a voxel basis after spatial normalization using deformation fields that discount macroscopic differences in shape. We estimated between-group differences in GM volume at each intracerebral voxel in standard space by fitting a full-factorial analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), and contrasted the SiM and SuM groups. We modeled age at image acquisition and sex/gender as covariates of no interest, in order to reduce the potential impact of these variables on the GM volume in language-associated brain areas. We identified spatially continuous voxels at a threshold of p < 0.01 (uncorrected; cluster forming threshold; Petersson et al., 1999) and defined a family wise error-corrected cluster-extent threshold of p < 0.05 to infer statistical significance. In order to mark areas with significant GM volume differences on this statistical threshold level, Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) coordinates were transformed into Talairach space ( MNI and Talairach Transformation, 2013; Talairach.org Daemon, 2013).

Results

Gray matter volume was lower in the group of SiMs as compared to SuMs in the following regions: bilaterally in the medial frontal gyrus (MFG) and the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG; p < 0.001, FWE); in the right IFG and right medial temporal gyrus (MTG); in the left inferior temporal gyrus (ITG); and in the right inferior posterior parietal gyrus ( p < 0.05, FWE; Table 2; Figure 1). The opposite contrast SuM > SiM did not reveal any significant results.

TABLE 2. Results SiM < SuM.

FIGURE 1. ANCOVA full factorial 2 × 2. Significant clusters ( P FWE-corr < 0.05) with smaller GMV in SiM versus SuM shown in red. Group template used as background image in gray.

Discussion

The present study of 44 multilinguals is to our knowledge the first VBM study in multilinguals as opposed to numerous studies in bilinguals. It shows that GM volume was higher in the group of multilinguals who learned their L2 successively compared to the multilingual who acquired a second language simultaneously with their L1. Thus, subjects who did not acquire two languages simultaneously (by immersion) in early life but learned them sequentially, mostly in classroom settings, showed larger GM volume patterns in cortical language-associated regions and the extended language network ( Ferstl et al., 2008). This result supports our thesis that early simultaneous bilingualism persists in the anatomical make-up of the adult brain.

The exact degree to which the difference between SiM and SuM is or is not influenced by a late learned L3 cannot be determined based on the present design. However, the other way round requires attention: testing trilinguals obliges us to tentatively hypothesize that despite the fact of a late learned L3 the differences based on the age of L2 acquisition persist into adulthood and do not disappear. Thus SiM and SuM remain different even though a late L3 was acquired. It can be assumed that the earlier in life a language experience is made, the more receptive the brain is to new learning and the more efficiently the brain can incorporate new language associated experiences, i.e., further input can be integrated into the same structural substrates. This would then be mirrored in GM patterns, particularly in the lower GM volume for early simultaneous L2 acquisition, including the late learned L3.

Our result corresponds with previous research showing an impact of L2 acquisition on GM volume of the bilingual brain ( Mechelli et al., 2004; Osterhout et al., 2008; Stein et al., 2012) as well as research on GM volumetric changes in multilinguals ( Elmer et al., 2014). However, the comparison of work applying GM density approaches and studies based on GM volumetric methods remains challenging. VBM is a technique that permits comparisons of the entire brain volume at the single voxel level. In contrast to previous studies ( Mechelli et al., 2004; Osterhout et al., 2008; Stein et al., 2012) which reported GM densities rather than volumes, we used "optimized" VBM, which includes an additional modulation step to minimize the potentially confounding effects of errors in stereotactic normalization ( Ashburner and Friston, 2001; Good et al., 2001). All images were smoothed using a 8 mm full-width-at-half-maximum Gaussian kernel, as in a previous study ( Mechelli et al., 2004). According to the matched filter theorem, the width of the smoothing kernel determines the scale at which morphological changes are most sensitively detected ( White et al., 2001). In the present study, we have chosen a rather small smoothing kernel, as this allows us to detect a greater number of regions with small structures and to better compare our results with the GM densities reported by Mechelli et al. (2004). Furthermore, both samples are based on healthy participants, so that we did not expect that regional changes would be very large or would differ much between cortical regions or between the studies. As expected, our results basically confirm the correlation ( Mechelli et al., 2004; Stein et al., 2012) and/or association between age of L2 acquisition and GM structure, as reported previously ( Osterhout et al., 2008).

In the present study, differences in GM volume were detected in the temporal as well as inferior and medial frontal regions of both hemispheres and the inferior parietal area. These are broadly parts of regions involved in the functional anatomy of language ( Price, 2010) and may be linked, with the exception of the right inferior prefrontal cortex, to the "extended language network" outlined in influential work on the functional processing of language comprehension ( Ferstl, 2007; Ferstl et al., 2008). Typically, primary language areas for language comprehension and production, such as Wernicke's and Broca's areas, did not display any significant difference between the SiM and SuM group. In the related fMRI study on multilingualism by Bloch et al. (2009), no specific group-dependent differences in activation were found in these areas either, which shows, for our population, that these regions are used, irrespectively of when a language is learned. The degree of variability in which they were activated by the three languages is, however, highly dependent on the age of L2 acquisition.

In the following, our GM data are discussed in relation to other studies on structural changes of gray matter linked to overall second language proficiency ( Stein et al., 2014). Special attention is given to the bilateral character of our results. In their whole brain analysis of early and late bilinguals, Mechelli et al. (2004) found structural changes in the inferior parietal cortex (IPC) in relation to age; similarly Osterhout et al. (2008) employed an ROI analysis and detected structural alterations in the same region. Here too, GM changes in the IPC were detected and linked to age of acquisition. Others have demonstrated that the GM density of this region is positively correlated with vocabulary acquisition and knowledge, suggesting that this area is important not only for global L2 acquisition but for handling a large vocabulary ( Lee et al., 2007; Richardson et al., 2010). Contrary to Mechelli et al. (2004), Osterhout et al. (2008), and Richardson et al. (2010), however, the present work showed changes in the right (x/y/z, 50/-79/48) and not in the left hemispheric IPC and thus supports the conclusions of Lee et al. (2007), who showed that vocabulary mastery predicted GM density in the bilateral IPC.

While Stein et al. (2012), in their longitudinal study on L2 acquisition, reported an increase in GM density in the left inferior frontal cortex (IFC) in close vicinity to the pars triangularis in Broca's area, the present study detected a bilateral pattern in this region and revealed a difference with respect to the age of L2 acquisition: Stein et al.'s (2012) participants learned L2 as adults, whereas our group of participants acquired their L2 as children. The results in our group of SiMs in IFC is in line with data of a recent cortical thickness study concerning the bilaterality of the structural patterns in this very same region ( Klein et al., 2014). Klein et al. (2014) report, however, that thickness correlates positively with age of acquisition in the left IFG and negatively in the right IFG; this opposing interhemispheric effect was not re-enacted in our study where the association of age with higher GM volumes clearly counts for both the right and left IFG.

Our results on bilateral differences between SiM and SuM in GM volume in IFC are corroborated by functional data from bi- and multilinguals showing greater bilateral activation during both L1 and L2 processing than for monolinguals ( Hull and Vaid, 2006; Park et al., 2012), with a strong tendency for the right Broca's homolog to be activated in the L1 of multilinguals ( Kaiser et al., 2007). There is still little evidence about the function of the MFG in the context of structural changes due to L2 acquisition, except that its cortical thickness shows alterations after very intensive language training over many months ( Mårtensson et al., 2012). Again, our present results reveal structural bilateral modifications in the MFG, whereas Mårtensson et al. (2012) found these only in the left side. Data based on functional MRI studies suggest that the MFG is crucial for text comprehension ( Ferstl and von Cramon, 2001).

It is well known that both the inferior and the middle temporal gyrus handle various aspects of lexical semantic representation and processing. Our study is, to our knowledge, the first to present changes in the GM volume due to early L2 acquisition in both the right MTG and left ITG.

Taken together, the right hemispheric trend (as exemplified in r-IPC; bilateral IFC; bilateral MFG; r-MTG) - which characterizes our set of multilinguals when differentiated by the age of L2 acquisition - could be influenced by two additional factors: by the mode of L2 acquisition and/or by the interference of the L3.

Our subjects were carefully selected on the basis of their multilingual profile and had to undergo extensive interviewing for 2-3 h about their three languages. However, some information about their languages was not captured. Thus, for instance, it cannot be excluded with certainty whether any of the simultaneous participants registered with German/Swiss German as L2 grew up in a non-German speaking country and acquired L1 from one caregiver and L2 (German/Swiss German) from a second caregiver. Nevertheless, the presence of immersion as the main access to L2 acquisition remains valid in SiM, as well as the presence of classroom learning in SuM. Future cross-sectional and longitudinal research is needed to identify which of these ways of learning L2, i.e., L2 acquisition based on high immersion by family, high immersion by context, medium-high immersion by context, temporary high immersion by context, or classroom learning has a greater impact on structural GM in relevant brain areas. Most recently, Pliatsikas et al. (2015) demonstrated the effects of immersion on brain structure in young, highly immersed late bilinguals. In their view, "[immersion] can be broadly defined as the degree to which language learners use their non-native language outside the classroom and for their day-to-day activities and usually presupposes that the learners live in an environment where their non-native language is exclusively or mostly used" (see Pliatsikas and Chondrogianni, 2015). Interestingly, structural alterations in white matter were shown to be effected by everyday L2 use in a naturalistic environment, rather than by length of L2 learning or age of onset of L2 learning ( Pliatsikas et al., 2015). Thus, our results in the group of SiM can also be interpreted from this perspective showing that naturalistic exposure, rather than age of L2 acquisition, impacts on brain structure. This is not the case for the group of SuM who in their majority acquired L2 as a foreign language in the classroom.

Finally, the impact of the L3 on language-associated brain areas and the extended language network remains to be elucidated. In our experimental setup, the age of L2 acquisition is the variable determining the GM structure early in development. However, the way in which training for additional languages drives GM plasticity in regions already influenced by bilingualism is open to speculation. Additional training might result in pruning of language networks, as suggested by Elmer et al. (2014), or might drive contralateral (right hemisphere) cortical areas to participate in language related tasks.

The results of the present study cannot prove a lifelong plasticity of the brain for languages since the examined subjects were chosen based on the fact of having learnt at least three languages during early or late childhood, respectively, and we do not know about further changes in their brains during adulthood. Neither do the obtained outcomes give any information if there is a critical age for the native-like acquisition of one or many languages, although there are certainly studies showing complex relations between the maturation of the brain in children and the brain's plasticity to adjust to structural demands of (individual) language development ( Brauer et al., 2011).

Methodical Considerations

Modification of the user-options implemented in the analysis software, such as setting the smoothing kernel, can influence subsequent statistical results ( Ashburner and Friston, 2001): a larger kernel (12 mm instead of 8 mm) results in greater cluster sizes ( Friston, 2003, p. 5). We used a default option of 8 mm as recommended. VBM compares voxel-by-voxel images of different groups and reports MNI standard coordinates for every cluster center, which does not necessarily correspond to the actual cluster localisation in an individual's brain. Thus VBM statistics do not differentiate between two clusters localized for example in the medial plane. In the present case, the large clusters in the medial frontal gyri on the left and the right are counted as one cluster.

As to the statistical thresholds, it is still very difficult to compare data from different studies. Height thresholds range from p uncorr < 0.001 up to p corr < 0.05 in different studies ( Brambati et al., 2004; Eckert et al., 2005; Silani et al., 2005; Hoeft et al., 2007; Steinbrink et al., 2008; Richardson and Price, 2009). Here, an uncorrected height threshold of p < 0.01 was used. The clusters found are therefore large, although there are small differences between the two groups.

Conclusion

Contrary to the successive acquisition of the second language, simultaneous acquisition of L1/L2 (by immersion) from the first year of life on is associated with low GM volume in language-associated regions, in the prefrontal, medial temporal and parietal cortex, in particular. This difference persists even though a late L3 is learned. Growing up in a multilingual environment in early childhood may change the individual's cortical structure, enforcing it to generally build more efficient synaptic networks for language processing. To further understand structural changes underlying brain plasticity during language learning requires longitudinal studies with homogenous groups of SiM and SuM.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Footnotes

1. http://dbm.neuro.uni-jena.de/vbm8/

2. http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/software/spm8/

References

Pliatsikas, C., and Chondrogianni, V. (2015). Learning a non-native language in a naturalistic environment: insights from behavioral and neuroimaging research (Editorial note). Frontiers Special Issue.
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Age of second language acquisition in multilinguals has an impact on gray matter volume in language-associated brain areas

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Numerous structural studies have established that experience shapes and reshapes the brain throughout a lifetime. The impact of early development, however, is still a matter of debate. Further clues may come from studying multilinguals who acquired their second language at different ages.

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Studies showing benefits at Univerisity of Montreal. Supports my thesis. Done by students. Not sure if useful. Mostly what I alreadty know.

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Bilingual Brain Study - University of Montreal

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Introduces cognitive benefits of being multilingual and gives example of tests that showed better performances by multilinguals. I think it is associated with the inhibitory control where it tries to block out distractions. "the same deeply personal question gets a different answer depending on the language in which you’re asking me. "

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Why being bilingual works wonders for your brain

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Research suggests we may be predisposed to speak more than one language, and that doing so brings health benefits, such as delaying the onset of dementia

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Studies showing inhibitory controls by monolinguals and bilinguals. This proves that the bilingual brains are more effective. " When the brain is constantly exercised in this way, it doesn't have to work as hard to perform cognitive tasks, the researchers found."
"The fMRI scans showed that "monolinguals had more activation in the inhibitory control regions than bilinguals; they had to work much harder to perform the task,"

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Speaking more than one language is good for the brain, according to new research that indicates bilingual speakers process information more efficiently and more easily than those who know a single language.

The benefits occur because the bilingual brain is constantly activating both languages and choosing which language to use and which to ignore, said Northwestern University's Viorica Marian, the lead author of the research and a professor in the department of communication sciences and disorders in the School of Communication. When the brain is constantly exercised in this way, it doesn't have to work as hard to perform cognitive tasks, the researchers found.

"It's like a stop light," Marian said. "Bilinguals are always giving the green light to one language and red to another. When you have to do that all the time, you get really good at inhibiting the words you don't need," she said.

The study, which will be published online in the journal Brain and Language on Nov. 12 was one of the first to use fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to test co-activation and inhibition in bilinguals. Co-activation during bilingual spoken language comprehension, a concept Marian pioneered in 1999, means that fluent bilinguals have both languages "active" at the same time, whether they are consciously using them or not. Inhibitory control involves selecting the correct language in the face of a competing other language.

Earlier in her career, Marian recorded eye movements to track co-activation and inhibition. She found that when bilinguals heard words in one language, such as "marker" in English, they often made eye movements to objects whose names sounded similar in another language they knew, such as "marka" which means stamp in Russian.

She is now looking at the brain itself by using MRI imaging, which shows blood flow to certain areas as the volunteers perform a cognitive task. The more oxygen or blood flow to the region, the harder that part of the brain is working.

In her most recent study, volunteers were asked to perform language comprehension tasks. Upon hearing a word, study participants were shown pictures of four objects. For example, after hearing the word " cloud" they would be shown four pictures, including a picture of a cloud and a picture of a similar-sounding word, such as a "clown." The study participants needed to recognize the correct word and ignore the similar-sounding competing word.

The bilingual speakers were better at filtering out the competing words because their brains are used to controlling two languages and inhibiting the irrelevant words, the researchers found.

The fMRI scans showed that "monolinguals had more activation in the inhibitory control regions than bilinguals; they had to work much harder to perform the task," Marian said.

Other research suggests efficient brains can have benefits in everyday life. For example, bilingual children were better at ignoring classroom noise than children who speak one language, according to a study Marian recently coauthored with colleagues in the U.K., which was published last month in the journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.

"Inhibitory control is a hallmark of cognition," said Marian. "Whether we're driving or performing surgery, it's important to focus on what really matters and ignore what doesn't."

The fact that bilinguals are constantly practicing inhibitory control could also help explain why bilingualism appears to offer a protective advantage against Alzheimer's and dementia, said Marian.

"That's the exciting part," she said. "Using another language provides the brain built-in exercise. You don't have to go out of your way to do a puzzle because the brain is already constantly juggling two languages. "

Marian's team included Northwestern Ph.D candidates Sarah Chabal and James Bartolotti. They collaborated with Kailyn Bradley and Arturo Hernandez of the University of Houston.

Marian grew up speaking Romanian and Russian. English is her third language; she also speaks some basic Spanish, French and Dutch.

"It's never too late to learn another language," she said. "The benefits can be seen even after just one semester of studying."

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Bilingual brains better equipped to process information

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Speaking more than one language is good for the brain, according to new research that indicates bilingual speakers process information more efficiently and more easily than those who know a single language. The benefits occur because the bilingual brain is constantly activating both languages and choosing which language to use and which to ignore, said a researcher.

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Examples of tests that agrees with my thesis from the past and explains how each one is carried out. Used it to show agreement and advantages in my paper. No quotes preferred as it is too general.

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Scientists have found another incentive for you to make the most of your foreign language class - a new study suggests that knowing more than one language can help boost our powers of attention and focus.

Researchers in the UK found that bilinguals are better able to zero in on the task at hand than those who only know one language, and it sheds light on a long-standing debate over how language learning affects the brain.

While the link between bilingualism and attention has been demonstrated before, it's been unclear if learning an extra language can actually improve the brain's ability to focus, rather than just helping it to block out distractions.

To figure out how bilingualism affects our ability to focus, researchers from the University of Birmingham recruited 99 volunteers, 51 of which only spoke English, while 48 had been speaking English and Chinese on a daily basis since an early age.

The researchers then had the two groups run through three well-established psychological tests.

In the so-called Flanker test, the participants were shown rows of arrows on a computer screen, and asked to press a key corresponding to the direction of the central arrow. This measured their capacity to ignore the arrows on either side of the central arrow.

For the Spatial Stroop test, only one arrow was shown each time, but it appeared in different places on the screen. This was designed to disorientate the viewer and test their focus.

Finally, the Simon task was very similar to the Spatial Stroop test, but used coloured blocks (red and blue) rather than arrows. Again, this was used to test response times when the stimuli were in unexpected or counterintuitive locations.

The two groups both scored about the same on the first test, suggesting they were equally as good at trying to block out distractions, but the monolinguals recorded slower responses over the three tests taken as a whole.

The researchers suggest that the bilingual brain is better at maintaining focus, due to its experience in regularly having to switch between languages - but there doesn't appear to be any advantage in how well it can tune out other distractions.

"Together with other evidence, our research suggests that the lifetime task of switching between languages appears to enhance the ability to maintain attention," said one of the researchers, Andrea Krott.

Now Krott and her colleagues want to understand more about how this improved ability to focus and sustain attention develops in bilinguals.

"It is already well known that the experience of speaking another language changes the structure of the brain and how it functions," she said. "But we do not understand very well how these changes lead to changes in behaviour."

In the meantime, if the internet has destroyed your attention span, you might want to consider signing up for a foreign language course.

The findings have been published in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.

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Bilingual Brains Have Better Attention And Focus, Study Finds

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Scientists have found another incentive for you to make the most of your foreign language class - a new study suggests that knowing more than one language can help boost our powers of attention and focus.

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Shows lots of advantages being multilingual. I used the part where infants were included in the test to show the advantage since young. "The cognitive and neurological benefits of bilingualism extend from early childhood to old age as the brain more efficiently processes information and staves off cognitive decline. "

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The Cognitive Benefits of Being Bilingual

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Today, more of the world's population is bilingual or multilingual than monolingual. In addition to facilitating cross-cultural communication, this trend also positively affects cognitive abilities. Researchers have shown that the bilingual brain can have better attention and task-switching capacities than the monolingual brain, thanks to its developed ability to inhibit one language while using another.

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Mentions how children pick up language easier. Works for me that it links to developing brains since young and connects with efficiency of learning and developing.  “as many as two million new connections, or synapses, are formed every second in an infant’s brain. By the age of two, a child has over one hundred trillion synapses, double the number an adult has.”

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Read 1,725 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Locked in the silence and darkness of your skull, your brain fashions the rich narrative...

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Tests carried out in Sardinia to prove the bilingual advantage, explaining code-switching was simpler for people who spoke multiple language. Supports my thesis and perfect example of diverse tests from around the world.  "bilingual children were seen to have "an aptitude for selective attention" and an ability to filter and focus on information which is important."

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Bilingual children outperform children who speak only one language in problem-solving skills and creative thinking, according to a new study.

Researchers set lingual, arithmetical and physical tasks for 121 children, aged about nine, in Scotland and Sardinia, Italy.

They found that the 62 bilingual children were "significantly more successful in the tasks set for them".

The study has been published in the International Journal of Bilingualism.

The Glasgow-based children spoke English and Gaelic, or English only, while the Sardinian cohort spoke either Italian only, or Italian and Sardinian.

Gaelic 'advantage'

They were asked to reproduce patterns of coloured blocks, to repeat orally a series of numbers, to give clear definitions of words and to resolve mentally a set of arithmetic problems.

The tasks were all set in English or Italian.

Researchers found that the bilingual children were "significantly more successful in the tasks set for them".

There was a marked difference in the level of detail and richness in description from the bilingual pupils
Dr Fraser Lauchlan, Strathclyde University

They observed that the Gaelic-speaking children were more successful than the Sardinian speakers.

The differences were linked to the mental alertness required to switch between languages, which could develop skills useful in other types of thinking.

The study found that the further advantage for Gaelic-speaking children may have been due to the formal teaching of the language and its extensive literature.

Sardinian is not widely taught in schools on the Italian island and has a largely oral tradition, which means there is currently no standardised form of the language.

The study was conducted by Strathclyde University with colleagues from the University of Cagliari in Sardinia.

It was led by Dr Fraser Lauchlan, an honorary lecturer at Strathclyde's school of psychological sciences.

He said: "Bilingualism is now largely seen as being beneficial to children but there remains a view that it can be confusing, and so potentially detrimental to them.

'Demonstrable benefits'

"Our study has found that it can have demonstrable benefits, not only in language but in arithmetic, problem solving and enabling children to think creatively.

"We also assessed the children's vocabulary, not so much for their knowledge of words as their understanding of them. Again, there was a marked difference in the level of detail and richness in description from the bilingual pupils."

Dr Lauchlan said that the bilingual children were seen to have "an aptitude for selective attention" and an ability to filter and focus on information which is important.

It is thought that this may come from the "code-switching" of thinking in two different languages.

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Bilingual children outperform children who speak only one language in problem-solving skills and creative thinking, according to a new study. Researchers set lingual, arithmetical and physical tasks for 121 children, aged about nine, in Scotland and Sardinia, Italy. They found that the 62 bilingual children were "significantly more successful in the tasks set for them".

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Spring board that mentions how learning a second language improved his cognitive skills. This made me wonder how  what other benefits learning second languages would give so, I investigate into learning new languages since young. No quotes were used here because it was only a foundation to my research.

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Op-Ed Contributor

Image

Credit Credit Jason Logan

I USED to joke that I spoke French like a 3-year-old. Until I met a French 3-year-old and couldn't hold up my end of the conversation. This was after a year of intense study, including at least two hours a day with Rosetta Stone, Fluenz and other self-instruction software, Meetup groups, an intensive weekend class and a steady diet of French movies, television and radio, followed by what I'd hoped would be the coup de grâce: two weeks of immersion at one of the top language schools in France.

"French resistance" took on an entirely new meaning as my brain repelled every strategy I employed. Yet my failure was in fact quite unremarkable. Advertising claims notwithstanding, few adults who tackle a foreign language achieve anything resembling proficiency. In the end, though, it turns out that spending a year not learning French may have been the best thing I could've done for my 57-year-old brain.

In the last few years, unable to hold a list of just four grocery items in my head, I'd begun to fret a bit over my literal state of mind. So to reassure myself that nothing was amiss, just before tackling French I took a cognitive assessment called CNS Vital Signs, recommended by a psychologist friend. The results were anything but reassuring: I scored below average for my age group in nearly all of the categories, notably landing in the bottom 10th percentile on the composite memory test and in the lowest 5 percent on the visual memory test.

This, obviously, did not bode well for my nascent language project, but I forged ahead. To be sure, learning a foreign language is a daunting task for any adult. How can something that a toddler accomplishes before learning to tie his shoes be so difficult for grown-ups?

Psycholinguists are divided on the answer, but they agree on several points. For starters, a 2-year-old's brain has a substantial neurological advantage, with 50 percent more synapses - the connections between neurons - than an adult brain, way more than it needs. This excess, which is an insurance policy against early trauma, is also crucial to childhood language acquisition, as is the plasticity, or adaptability, of the young brain.

Once the "critical period" - the roughly six years of life during which the brain is wired for learning language - is over, the ability to acquire a first language is lost, as your brain frees up room for the other skills you'll need as you mature, such as the ability to kill a wild boar, or learn math, or operate your iPad.

Another advantage a toddler holds is his very lack of experience. After speaking our native language for decades, we adults can't help but hear the second language through the filter of the first. And this filter doesn't take decades to develop. Researchers have found that newborn Japanese babies can distinguish between the English "L" and "R" sounds, but if not exposed to Western languages, they begin to lose that ability - not by the age of 6 or even 3 - but by eight months.

Adult language learners are, to borrow a phrase used by some psycholinguists, too smart for our own good. We process too much data at once, try to get everything right from the get-go and are self-conscious about our efforts. But toddlers instinctively grasp what's important and are quite content to say, "Tommy hitted me," as long as Tommy gets what's coming to him.

All this means that we adults have to work our brains hard to learn a second language. But that may be all the more reason to try, for my failed French quest yielded an unexpected benefit. After a year of struggling with the language, I retook the cognitive assessment, and the results shocked me. My scores had skyrocketed, placing me above average in seven of 10 categories, and average in the other three. My verbal memory score leapt from the bottom half to the 88th - the 88th! - percentile and my visual memory test shot from the bottom 5th percentile to the 50th. Studying a language had been like drinking from a mental fountain of youth.

What might explain such an improvement?

Last year researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Northwestern University in Illinois hypothesized that language study should prove beneficial for older adults, noting that the cognitive tasks involved - including working memory, inductive reasoning, sound discrimination and task switching - map closely to the areas of the brain that are most associated with declines due to aging. In other words, the things that make second-language acquisition so maddening for grown-ups are the very things that may make the effort so beneficial.

The quest for a mental fountain of youth, pursued by baby boomers who fear that their bodies will outlive their brains, and who have deeper pockets than Juan Ponce de León, has created a billion-dollar industry. There is some evidence that brain exercise programs like Lumosity and Nintendo's Brain Age can be beneficial, but if my admittedly unscientific experience is any indication, you might be better off studying a language instead. Not only is that a far more useful and enjoyable activity than an abstract brain game, but as a reward for your efforts, you can treat yourself to a trip abroad. Which is why I plan to spend the next year not learning Italian. Ciao!

William Alexander is the author of the forthcoming book "Flirting With French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: The Benefits of Failing at French. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Opinion | The Benefits of Failing at French

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Op-Ed Contributor I USED to joke that I spoke French like a 3-year-old. Until I met a French 3-year-old and couldn't hold up my end of the conversation.