title: Brain potential and functional MRI evidence for how to handle two languages with one brain.
abstract: Bilingual individuals need effective mechanisms to prevent interference from one language while processing material in the other. Here we show, using event-related brain potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), that words from the non-target language are rejected at an early stage before semantic analysis in bilinguals. Bilingual Spanish/Catalan and monolingual Spanish subjects were instructed to press a button when presented with words in one language, while ignoring words in the other language and pseudowords. The brain potentials of bilingual subjects in response to words of the non-target language were not sensitive to word frequency, indicating that the meaning of non-target words was not accessed in bilinguals. The fMRI activation patterns of bilinguals included a number of areas previously implicated in phonological and pseudoword processing, suggesting that bilinguals use an indirect phonological access route to the lexicon of the target language to avoid interference.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychology, Otto von Guericke University, Universitätsplatz 2, Gebäude 24, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Antoni
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rodriguez-Fornells
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rotte
authors.forename: Hans-Jochen
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Heinze
authors.forename: Tömme
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nösselt
authors.forename: Thomas F
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Münte
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D019303:Multilingualism; D011930:Reaction Time