Bilingual Brain - Hardcover

..".provides a sense of wonder in the remarkable capacity that humans have to learn more than one language. It combines the neuroscience of bilingualism with historical, personal, and autobiographical perspectives that relay the experience and study of bilingualism in a humorous way, inspiring interest while intellectually challenging the reader. We learn about cognitive and neuroimaging approaches to understanding language, the impact of the age that language is acquired, the hours of practice required to be a language expert, and the phenomenally complex cognitive control required to switch effectively between languages. By comparing the complexities of language and neuroanatomy with expertise and knowledge of other important human skills, Dr. Hernandez's exposition on the bilingual brain convinces us how interesting and entertaining neuroscience can be."-- Cathy Price, Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London " How the brain supports multiple languages is a fascinating topic for the scientist and the layperson alike. Hernandez provides an in-depth discussion of historical perspectives and the latest discoveries in the study of the bilingual brain, lively and lucidly integrating models with data, concepts with examples, and theoretical approaches with personalized accounts. Accessible to non-specialists, this book will be a reading pleasure and a learning experience for everyone interested in the bilingual mind and brain."-- Ping Li, Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, and Information Sciences and Technology, Pennsylvania State University " Hernandez provides a beautiful introduction to the fascinating world of bilingualism. This is a personal journey of discovery into how mind and brain work together to create our uniquely human language abilities. The author explores the state-of-the-art thinking, from cognitive theory to the latest brain scanning techniques, to unveil how our experience learning a language ultimately shapes it and protects it from damage such as strokes. Personally, I was particularly intrigued by Hernandez's ability to draw parallels between language skills and those in very different domains such as memory, attention, and even sports and music. This book is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered how language works in the brain."-- Joseph Devlin, Reader in the Neurobiology of Language, University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience

Cases of language loss and recovery bring up an intriguing paradox. If two languages are stored in the brain, how can it be that a person can lose one of them, but not the other, and then gain one back without relearning it? The traditional models of how a language is represented in the brain suggest that languages can become inaccessible, even though they are not entirely lost. As the author demonstrates through fascinating cases, stress―whether due to foreign language immersion, sleep deprivation, or brain damage―can lead to the apparent loss of one language, but not the other. Arturo Hernandez presents the results of 25 years of research into the factors that might help us to understand how two (or more) languages are stored in one brain. It is clear that the brain is not egalitarian―some languages are privileged and others are not, but why?

Hernandez will extend recent work that has begun to take a biological or natural systems approach. He proposes that, in bilinguals, two languages live inside a brain almost like two species live in an ecosystem. For the most part they peacefully co-exist and often share resources. But they also compete for resources, particularly when under stress. Although there are still many questions to answer and many puzzles to solve, Hernandez argues that the nonlinear dynamical models, which have been used to uncover the underlying mechanisms seen in natural systems and more recently in language and cognition, can be used to shed considerable light on the neural bases of bilingualism.