The present study investigated language inhibition and cross-language interference as two possible mechanisms of bilingual language
control (BLC) that can be affected by Huntington’s disease (HD), a neurodegenerative disease (ND) affecting the striatum. To this
aim, the study explored the performance of pre-symptomatic and early-stage HD patients in two experimental tasks meant to elicit
cross-language interference and language inhibition, including a Stroop task and a language switching task. The results revealed
dissociations between these two mechanisms, indicating that language activation or inhibition is related to HD pathology while
cross-language interference is not. Switch costs in HD patients were greater than controls in low-demand control conditions of
language switching (longer preparation time), while Stroop effects were similar between the two groups of participants. This
result was interpreted as a difficulty in overcoming the excessive inhibition applied to non-target language. The BLC processes
related to the striatum and subcortical structures are discussed.
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