page_title: Bilingual memory
section_title: Biological basis of bilingual memories
hierarchical_section_title: Bilingual memory / Biological basis of bilingual memories
caption_attribution_description: English: Sagittal MRI slice with highlighting indicating location of the anterior cingulate cortex.
context_page_description: Bilingualism is the regular use of two fluent languages, and bilinguals are those individuals who need and use two languages in their everyday lives. A person's bilingual memories are heavily dependent on the person's fluency, the age the second language was acquired, and high language proficiency to both languages. High proficiency provides mental flexibility across all domains of thought and forces them to adopt strategies that accelerate cognitive development. People who are bilingual integrate and organize the information of two languages, which creates advantages in terms of many cognitive abilities, such as intelligence, creativity, analogical reasoning, classification skills, problem solving, learning strategies, and thinking flexibility.
context_section_description: One of the processes involved in analyzing which neural regions of the brain are involved in bilingual memory is a subtraction method. Researchers compare what has been impaired with what is functioning regularly. This contrast between the destroyed and intact regions of the brain aids researchers in discovering the components of language processing. It has been found that under typical circumstances, when multiple languages are lost at the same time, they are usually regained in the same fashion. It is therefore presumed that areas of the brain, which are responsible for processing language, are potentially the same. There have been examples of cases where languages have been restored prior to one another and to a greater degree, but this is fairly uncommon. The techniques allowing researchers to observe brain activity in multilingual patients are conducted whilst the subject is simultaneously performing and processing a language. Research has proposed that the entire production and comprehension of language is most likely regulated and managed by neural pools, whose stations of communication are in the cortical and subcortical regions. It has been shown that there are no grounds on which to assume the existence of distinct cerebral organization of separate languages in the bilingual brain. That is to say, the cerebral regions that are engaged for both languages are the same. Although neurologists have a basic understanding of the underlying neural components and mechanisms of bilingual language, further research is necessary in order to fully understand or conclude any other findings. 
  Neuroimaging techniques such as fMRIs have shown that at least four brain areas are involved in bilingual switching: dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal cortex, anterior cingulate, and supramarginal gyrus. It is expected that switching from one language to another should involve different functional processes when compared to the brain of an individual who only speaks one language. However further studies on brain activation during this switching of languages needs to be done.
caption: Anterior Cingulate
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