ABSTRACT
Decades of research on bilingualism have produced a vibrant field of work that attempts to account for the ways in which bi-multilingual speakers learn and negotiate the presence of more than one language in the same mind and brain. A broad definition of bilingualism encompasses speakers who utilize two or more languages along a variable scale of proficiency and contexts of use. Neurocognitive and physiological restructuring is a foundational aspect of the human brain during various stages of life, including infancy, childhood, adolescence, and in older age. A surge in neuroimaging research over the past thirty years has enabled researchers to further understand cognitive changes in healthy aging in the light of neural changes. The proposal that bilingualism could be accounted for as a cognitive and neural reserve factor comes from data showing a tendency in bilinguals to develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease later than monolinguals.
