The cross-cultural bilingual brain. Comment on 'The bilingual brain: Flexibility and control in the human cortex' by Buchweitz and Prat. (Note)

摘要

There is good reason for the recent excitement surrounding the study of the bilingual brain: globalization and widespread use of digital technology have enabled increased cross-cultural communication with more people becoming bilingual, while bilingualism confers clear social, economic, and even cognitive benefits to the individual and to the society as a whole [1,2]. A significant research question that arises is how we can use bilingualism as a window into the adaptive nature of the human mind and brain. An explosion in the neuroscience study of bilingualism in the last decade has helped us to unravel the neurocognitive mechanisms of learning and using multiple languages [3,4], along with an understanding of the significant implications that an adaptive bilingual brain might have for education, technology, and social development [5].