where is a second language stored in the brain
Neuroscience of multilingualism Insights into language storage in the brain have come from studying multilingual individuals afflicted with a form of aphasia. The symptoms and severity of aphasia in multilingual individuals depend on the number of languages the individual knows, what order they learned them, and thus have them stored in the brain, the age at which they learned them, how frequently each language is used, and how proficient the individual is in using those languages.[11][12] Two primary theoretical approaches to studying and viewing multilingual aphasics existâ€”the localizationalist approach and the dynamic approach. The localizationalist approach views different languages as stored in different regions of the brain, explaining why multilingual aphasics may lose one language they know, but not the other(s).[13] The dynamical theory (or shared representation) approach suggests that the language system is supervised by a dynamic equilibrium between the existing language capabilities and the constant alteration and adaptation to the communicative requirements of the environment.[14][15][16] The dynamic approach views the representation and control aspects of the language system as compromised as a result of brain damage to the brain's language regions.[17][18][19] The dynamic approach offers a satisfactory explanation for the various recovery times of each of the languages the aphasic has had impaired or lost because of the brain damage. Recovery of languages varies across aphasic patients. Some may recover all lost or impaired languages simultaneously. For some, one language is recovered before the others. In others, an involuntary mix of languages occurs in the recovery process; they intermix words from the various languages they know when speaking.[19] Research affirms with the two approaches combined into the amalgamated hypothesis, it states that while languages do share some parts of the brain, they can also be allotted to some separate areas that are neutral.[16]