Acquisition of an additional language: contribution to the study of brain plasticity in bilingualism cases

• Grant number: 23/10358-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2024
• End date: January 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Portuguese Language
• Principal Investigator: Maria Célia Pereira Lima Hernandes
• Grantee: Isabella Silva Cantos
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Language is a special capacity that allows human beings to interact among their conspecifics. There are interactive situations in which more than one linguistic system is used, both in the context of an additional language, mother tongue and heritage language. Users in these conditions are known as bilinguals. The present work focuses on understanding how linguistic mechanisms can modify the processing of languages in a specific typology (maternal, additional and inheritance), that is, how the bilingual brain can relate to neuroplasticity considering attritional processes. The evidence so far reviewed is highly consistent in favor of anatomical-structural modification of the bilingual brain versus the monolingual brain. This finding made it possible to perceive some changes, which include greater gray matter density in the bilingual brain than in the monolingual brain, as well as regions of greater fractional anisotropy in the monolingual brain compared to the bilingual brain, even if minimally. This indicates that white matter integrity may not stabilize in bilinguals until late adulthood. To verify the areas that most prominently recruit neurons for this processing in bilinguals in contrast to that in monolinguals, researchers have operated with brain imaging. Here, we propose a preliminary study of the scientific bibliographic bases involving these procedures so that we have the state of the art on this topic based on the last five years. This result will lead us to understand the correlation between additional language acquisition and brain plasticity.