Chapter 16. Cerebral imaging and individual differences in language learning

The majority of the brain imaging studies on bilingualism have focused on the question of the separation or overlap of the neural regions involved when a bilingual brain is working with one language or the other. Researchers have been especially interested in the roles of factors such as age of acquisition of the second language and level of proficiency. In recent studies, however, new questions about the bilingual brain have started to be explored. For example, are there anatomical and/or functional differences between the brains of bilinguals and monolinguals? Do the interindividual differences in the ability to learn a second language correlate with brain differences? We will present recently published and ongoing work about these questions.