Bilingualism and Bilingual Education Enhance Brain Function and Global Economic Preparedness

The merits of bilingual education have been debated from numerous points of view and in different contexts. Historically, bilingualism’s effect on the brain has been mostly absent from this debate. Here, we review studies that compare monolingual and bilingual brains. Taken together, these studies reveal that, when compared to monolinguals, bilinguals exhibit: better performance on tasks that require executive control, enriched connectivity in certain regions of the brain, and reduced age-related atrophy. Considered alongside extant neuroscientific theory, these results can be understood as manifestations of the “use it or lose it” principle. Specifically, bilingual brains are tasked with encoding words and grammar in multiple languages, and with suppressing the activation of the circuitry corresponding to the language that is not being used in a particular context

Bilingual education · Brain activity and meditation · Brain function · Extant taxon · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Preparedness · Categorization, perception, and language · Hemispheric Asymmetry in Neuroscience · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism