Neurocognitive approaches to bilingualism: Asian languages

In the last decade there has been a surge of interest in the use of neuroimaging tools such as event-related potentials (ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine critical issues in the representation and processing of multiple languages in the brain. In 2001, David Green edited a special issue for Bilingualism: Language and Cognition on the cognitive neuroscience of bilingualism that involved studies of bilingual populations in English, German, Italian, and Japanese. According to a review by Vaid and Hull (2002), by 2001, there were at least 25 fMRI studies and 13 PET (positron emission tomography) studies of bilingual language processing in healthy individuals. This number has grown more rapidly since 2001. Many of these neuroscience studies of bilingualism have also appeared in top science journals and attracted widespread attention.