Hello, good morning to everyone. Yes Okay, so we are very very happy to welcome you to the fifth Barcelona summer school on bilingualism and multilingualism This is as I say the fifth edition of the school and is since it started it has been a well-attended very internationally Attended also event we have amongst you about 20 Different countries of origin or these countries where you state that you're working and This is an immense pleasure for us because it means that the program that we have put together is of interest To a general audience, which is what we are aiming most Albert Costa to my left is going to go through the program But let me tell you that In our view, this is in fact what has attracted such a wide international audience the high quality of our speakers year after year of course the high quality of you attendees do and The proof of it is the fact that we're going to be able to hold day and a half In our program of presentations from you, which is the other sort of emblematic Element in the program I Think we were the first school to devise such a kind of organization having very high quality speakers international speakers, but also having very high quality presentations from Researchers we could say perhaps young researchers in many cases or Researchers starting their professional careers in a sense some of you have been here before and this is again Something that makes us very happy. So there are repeaters here And there are more people who would have liked to attend which is something else that you can see but we actually have a full house and there's even people who would have liked it to attend and There's no more chairs and for security reasons. We cannot add any more chairs So if anyone wants to invite anybody you should leave the chair for this person because really no one else can sit here As I say for security purposes. So in fact welcome then To the summer school. It's also it's not only academic work that we do here. We have a social a social networking part in the school and you will see it throughout these days and And and we have suggestions for that and we will be telling you throughout the days now the University that welcomes you is called Pompeo Fabra and We we We like to call it Universidad which is the Catalan word because as you know very well and you've seen yesterday perhaps This is a country where the two languages are very lively and there is There's a lot politically behind behind them always very peacefully as you also saw yesterday, but this issue is here and We definitely have two languages and Pompeo Fabra was the person who managed to Work with our language to standardize it So before Pompeo have Fabra, of course, Catalan is the language that has been spoken for centuries Okay, it it comes from Provencal Some people in the south of France also there's a region in south of France Which we actually call the north of Catalonia Catalonia north But Pompeo Fabra came along and although being an industrial engineer He wasn't a linguist because the family didn't allow him To just study languages at the time Yeah, he had to study industrial engineering, which is not easy. So he did a lot of work in that sense but then That's what he wanted. He wanted to work with languages and He then standardized the language meaning he Put forward he worked on a grammar of Catalan A reason in Catalan, he also produced a grammar of Catalan written in French and a grammar of Catalan written in English So he also wanted Catalan to be an international language. He wanted Catalan to be known elsewhere Okay, and he also produced the first dictionary of Catalan so he worked on grammar semantics and Lexis the only thing he perhaps did less of work But still did something is on phonetics Okay You have a very interesting Exhibition of his works at the library Which is one part of the university that we Deeply recommend you to visit and perhaps we can organize that at some point just I mean it's a cross the road But with an interesting underground tunnel that takes us there and it's built and this is another curiosity about a university premises it's built inside a Kind of tower which on the top holds a water pond that waters the Green Park adjacent to us which is called suit a daily a park where the zoo is actually located So perhaps you've seen that on the map Now the Pompeo Fabra the university that Pompeo Fabra started as a city university Meaning it wanted to use all premises that were already present in in the city of Barcelona renovated them and Wanted to have an impact on the surrounding area of the university. So we got a four or five Four or five I say I don't know four or five Buildings spread over this part of the city. In fact, I don't know whether you've seen that on the web now the building where we are was military barracks they were renovated and The town hall allowed Pompeo Fabra to use this building actually buying it of course previously with the compromise that this tower that was watering The park would be kept the same functioning as What it is. Yeah, it waters the part because it actually Sucks up water which is underground. That's why it is very important It's quite extraordinary. You walk into the library going back to the library You look up and you see mirrors and those mirrors hold on top of them the water the mirrors themselves They allow you to see the streets around so it is quite an architectural Jewel Okay, haven't said this. I think that I can stop Again, thank you very much for trusting on the school And I hope that everything pleases you don't hesitate to tell you anything that you consider that you want to comment throughout these days and To the rest of the team which I'll bet we'll introduce Okay, I just I just said it It's okay. I Said usually you would start in a summer school I guess with child acquisition then you go to adult language processing and then you end up with a language attrition or the aging Population, okay, but we have inverted this today. So we start with a aging. Okay, so my talk is essentially about The interplay between bilingualism and healthy aging Okay, I will start I like to start with this slide to show Linguistic diversity all over the world and as you see Do you see the mouse there? Yes Even Spain has a it's linguistic diversity and we are actually in the region in Spain where already bilingualism is Represented at its best But there are some areas in the world like look those those circles where you have really the coexistence of many languages Look for instance India. I'm spending recently some time in India in Nepal to study this phenomenon. Look 3300 mother languages, okay 21 plus one official language the plus one is probably English and 22 other languages really spoken So almost everyone in India is bilingual or multi or multi lingual Okay, so we will end up with this phenomenon that probably it's difficult to find in the future moral in words Okay Nepal is the same but on a small on a smaller scale. It has less than seven million inhabitants Okay, but it has if I am correct something like 150 official languages There's not by by law. There's no one official language Also most people in the only school Nepali, but all languages have the status as a as an official language And I just want to say that even in a small country like Nepal There's an increase of dementia Great, okay, which is one of the main topics of my talk today of my lessons actually and it's funny to see that the Nepalese dementia society brings it back to growing urbanization unhygienic foot and Hectic lifestyle have been really involved into the genesis of this increased rate of Dementia, but we will see much more about this in during my lesson Just an overview dementia cognitive decline in general is really a social social economic problem in In our century actually, okay, we expected for instance in in China to have more than 50 million Alzheimer dementia patients by 2050. Okay, it's a huge numbers if you translated into into really money it means that governments have to spend billions for taking care of dementia individuals with a Dementia, so and you should also know that there's no there's no drug no medicine on the market that can actually cure dementia. There are some drugs which Scientists say they may delay up to six months the onset of dementia or really Slow a little bit the progression, but really we don't have nothing actually up to date Before starting I mean you probably know this all better than me before starting Was my lesson I just want to remind you whenever we study bilingual subjects There are some important things we should always take into account. It is Some of these issues are related to our participants or bilingual subjects like their language history the function of the languages We always have to measure their level of proficiency and exposure and the best would be with really a Psycho-linguistic material. I usually don't like self-reported Questionnaires who of you uses self-reported questionnaires You won't publish with us And of course we have to know stimulus choice and task just an example if you have for instance Immigrants, okay Maybe they have they never learned to read and write in the native language So we cannot use a reading task and so on We need to have some more information about the background about the social economical status because those are all factors that may influence specifically in this case brain activity or brain differences cultural difference are equally important and I will show you later some Some new information about individual brain differences even neuroanatomy can make a small difference in cognitive performance And the best thing would be especially for aging population if you have also an idea about the cognitive status And of course, whatever I do whatever experiment and run I must I should have At least one experimental hypothesis. Okay, most of the work I will present has to do with neuroimaging, which is of course very Expensive it's costly time time consuming. I cannot just spend 10 20,000 euros running experiment to see Let's see if this linguistic Theory works in the brain. Okay, if you have if you have another fact you lost a lot of money and It would probably end up like this. I just show this as Some historical antidote 20 years ago, we would have sought at least in the brain that each language would have its Representation in the brain. Okay, like you see a lot of languages here But this is not the case actually we know from 25 years of neuroimaging that Languages are all stored in the same language area Okay, so it's not right to say one language is maybe more anterior posterior or the other hemisphere or not Okay, but of course we see differences in activity between two different languages Okay, but just please keep in mind that those differences are mostly outside classical language areas Okay, we may see for instance if I compare Chinese English bilingual I compare Chinese to English. Okay, I see much more right hemispheric Activity for Chinese. Okay, but this is because of the very essence of Chinese It's a more visual spatial and semantically loaded language. They're not English So and if you know brain anatomy, you saw that the visual you must know that visual spatial functions are Mostly in the right hemisphere. So that explains why Chinese activates more right hemisphere as Compared to English. Okay, then we have also cases like by language who speak fluently One language and the other one is not spoken so fluently. Okay, and for a language, which is Not spoken so fluently. I usually observe some extra brain activity in Certain areas again outside classical language areas I would see brain activity in areas which we call language control areas. Okay, those are areas connected to attention executive functions Working memory. Okay, because it's more difficult to speak a language which I don't master perfectly It's less automatic in my brain. So I need more neural resources for mastering it Okay, so these are the differences we see in the in the brain But it does not allow us to say that two languages are differently stored or represented in the brain It's not a question of anatomy. It's a question of more physiology And Those are actually those three crucial variables we see we have seen the last 20 years that make the difference Okay, like age of acquisition second language acquisition Even if you are very very very high proficient bilingual speaker, but especially for Grammatical tasks, we see that there's some extra activity for your second language if it was learned after the age of puberty proficiency The less proficient I am in one of my languages the more brain activity it Intels again outside language areas and the same for exposure And it's a pity that many of us don't study actually exposure of language of our subjects Okay, but it makes a huge difference if I if I have one of my first studies was actually with Spanish Catalan subjects from Barcelona we shipped them all in Milan and Like 25 years ago and even professor Costa was one of those subjects. He was finishing a study stand, but then yes I was a student too, but at that time And they were all high-proficient speakers of Catalan and Spanish all really Early acquires opposed languages, but the only difference was that as a native Catalan speaker you are less exposed to Spanish in Barcelona than as a native Spanish speaker because you're much more exposed to your second language Which is just Catalan and that really makes a huge difference in brain activity Okay, just this difference in exposure makes a huge difference in brain activity So today We're going to talk about of course the cognitive implications of bilingualism. I Just talked about you Albert coming to Milan 25 years ago for doing one of my first experiments and Yeah We're talking about briefly about bilingual versus monolingual language processing mostly it will focus around language control We mentioned a little bit about the cognitive advantages. I saw in the booklet There are many posters presentations about executive functions So you surely may be also interested in my opinion about what this and then we switch over to neural implications and Much of the time will be spent on healthy aging We'll talk about brain specificity about neural reserve and neural compensation You have questions still here. Everything was fine social economical status good question Whenever you see some abbreviation just just really Welcome you my cat sissy But then she was six months old now. She's 14. She's well still wet. So this slide is just to show you How subconsciously we would name this picture cat, okay? It happens in all of our brains when we have to name pictures We have to do internal competition between Items that are phonologically similar like hat and cat and items that are semantically close to it like dog Okay A lot of animals. Okay, this happens Whenever we have to name and whenever we speak, okay, but in bilingual it's a little bit more complicated Okay, because competition is not only between items of the same language but also between items of the other language and not only with the translation equivalent of cat but also with Semantically and phonologically similar items in the other language, which is not requested. Okay Like again dog and here the competition would be probably with Mao and go. Do you know what language that is? What Cantonese who is Cantonese there's some Cantonese speaker So what language do you speak? Well, it's linguistically very close to Cantonese So, who is from China? How do you say dog and cat in Chinese? Go, so it's very similar Mao In Cantonese, okay So whenever we have to do a naming task, but this is also true for spontaneous speech, okay a bilingual has to Do this competition with the other language Okay, and this is one of the real differences between monolingual and bilingual language processing Okay, and then there may be me sometimes a conflict. Okay, imagine you are Your yes, it's excellent to clarify this from from the start, you know in in your linguistic The best definition is a bilingual someone who speaks understands two languages and you can then you can really then Classify a bilingual based upon age of acquisition proficiency and even exposure. Okay, it may you may hold on even for a late By a bilingual who learned his second language after age 20 even okay You have all also these processes in in the brain okay, and Sometimes it's not easy to find the words you are looking for in the other language. Okay, so this is just a very very Basic example what a language conflict is and maybe the other language the unwanted language just slips through Okay, and you have in some some way to inhibit that language and not all cognitive psychologists and psycho linguists are In accordance for instance with us about inhibition. Okay, there are some models. They just spotted Activation, but as a neuroscientist, I must tell you 33 percent of our neurons are inhibitory Interneurants, okay, and without them we would all have epileptic seizures Okay, so really half of the activity of our brain is just to inhibit Okay, so and I think we should take some messages from neuroscience into cognitive science Okay, so I'm really one of those fellas who really favor inhibitory control models. Okay, but that's how the brain works How can we investigate like in the lab? language control One of the most commonly used paradigms is a language switching paradigm. Okay, it's just exemplified here by Naming a picture and choosing the language based upon its color of presentation like red would be the first language and blue would be To use the second language and we have such a paradigm some trials which are labeled as switch trials Okay, when the language changes, okay when the color of one picture is different from the color of the previous picture Someone increase my voice. I'm not in pubertina the guy they are good and Of course a trial the same color is called the repetition trial And if I now subtract from switch trial repetition trials, I have actually a good index of language control and This is used widely in behavioral science and in in our field in neuroscience Okay, and this is how the brain areas that actually work to avoid language conflicts Okay, we just have to learn them all together and I will tell you we'll see them during my lesson What they are for one of the most important of them is the anterior and singlet cortex a cc Okay, it's our monitoring area. Okay, and we will see that it's not specific for language Okay, it's it monitors all of our actions So they're not only a language it isn't an area that corrects an error It just signals to other areas. Oh wait, that's wrong or wrong language choice Okay, and it communicates with left code eight. Okay, the subcortical Structure just sort of of small supervisor which really puts Signals information to other areas like the prefrontal cortex Which is an area that really can inhibit or select responses Okay, and we have two other areas SMG means super marginal gyrus, but just keep in mind It's the inferior parietal loboon Bilaterally that are much more involved into those attentional mechanism of language control to bias or put attention towards a language Okay, and from a from a language So we have the anterior single cortex prefrontal cortex you code eight and parietal inferior parietal loboon You just see it on a different brain slice Prefrontal cortex and theory single cortex Left code eight and inferior parietal loboon. Okay, and since lesson should be interactive now I ask you what area is this Question with ACC. Wow. We're so fast and this one Perfect and what's this? And this one Yes, and this one just a joke You were so so fast though. I have to make it more more difficult. Okay Recently we have we have updated our or more liquid that paper was from 2008 in 2016 last year We updated it because a lot of new new information has come recently in okay, and the whole network is much more complicated as you can see the prefrontal cortex now we really We divide them between left and right side the left side would be much more involved in response selection and Activation why on the other hand the right prefrontal cortex is much more involved in inhibit inhibition Okay, when I have to to inhibit a language. It's mostly done through the right prefrontal cortex Another area which was added into the model is the cerebellum Okay, we will see later when I talk about the adaptive control model that it's it's involved in opportunistic planning during language switching It's always good to know The first experiments in the field. So I just showed you briefly The first experiment done with these techniques with neuroimaging on the language control The very first was done in London in 99 by Cathy Price David Green and von Stutnitz The subjects had to translate words. Okay, even translation is a very very potent paradigm to study language control because I have to go from one language to the other, okay, and Translating words activated Selectively the code 8 okay, especially the left code code 8 This study is from Lehton and colleagues done in Finland was finished Swedish bilinguals or Finnish Norwegian I don't remember well, but it was sentence translation and a part of the left code 8 We have also some activity in the left prefrontal cortex And this is this is very nice study is still done by by Korean and colleagues in Cathy Price in London and in Tokyo with three different groups of bilinguals and with two different techniques one was a MR MRI experiment and the other one was a pet experiment. I will show you later what a pet is and There was a semantic priming experiments, but the priming means you see for instance a prime and then the target word Okay, and if The prime and the target word were in two different languages. It selectively activated the Left code 8 So it is really a crucial area involved in language control By now many other studies have been have been published a couple of years ago We did a mid analysis on our published study on the switching and The network you see here is very very similar to the model that we actually postulated years before you have prefrontal activity You have the parietal activity you have both code 8 and the ACC This is study. We've done a couple of years ago in in Geneva to Study really much better language control in the same group of of subjects Our subjects were 12 students from the translation school in Geneva The native language was German and they were all becoming better in French So one day they could become simultaneous translators. Okay professional and in the experiment we just there was a picture naming experiment and Just asked them to to name the picture based on the queue that will follow the picture and In one part of the experiment which we called the monolingual part Although all subjects are bilinguals the queue could be name or work So if you see the queue name after a picture like in this in this case picture car the subject has to to use only in In their first language out of France like whatever it is whatever now it's related to this picture If they would see the queue verb they have to generate a verb Related to the picture which might be to drive to park to steer and so on Okay, and everything was done in their native language in German. Okay the second part of the experiment Was exactly the same same stimuli same subjects Okay, but the queue changed the queue was not any more noun or verb, but the queue was German or French But we were not interested in French Actually, we were just interested what would happen German here Okay, so we analyzed only brain activities related to German nouns in this part of the experiment and we compared them to German nouns of this part of the experiment Okay, so the images. I show you it's just Generating words announced in German, but we are in two different contexts. Okay the subject noted in one context It's it's a monolingual context Okay, because the selection is only between now number in the same language and the subjects Of course now that the other context is a bilingual context Okay, and this is what happens in the in the brain and who of you is going to explain me this Let's imagine I cannot explain this So I need your input you look more interested. So Yes Oh Okay, so You really think it's the same but yeah But no Subjects, but it behaves totally different Okay So it means that even The amount of time probably we spent in a bilingual context or in a monolingual context may may eventually make a difference in our brain We talk about this later, but this is really really important I mean all of you probably are in a bilingual context. Okay, except those for whom English is the only language Okay sometimes if you Let me see You both are Russians Okay, so if you speak now together Russian was with your neighbor You think your brain would be like this or like this Like this because you know that we speak English also here Okay, yes But if you would go no home home or have dinner together and speak only Russian and there's no other language popping out then your brain would behave like this, okay and Maybe it's not so interesting but this this experiment is important to say that Which we'll see later that really The amount of time you spend in this status as a bilingual or in this status may eventually have some repercussions on your brain language control is of course also highly influenced by language proficiency, okay Like in this experiment of one and cool colleagues Forward switching is much more difficult than backward switching into the weaker language and In this experiment of ours done in Geneva, which is actually one of the few experiments done in comprehension That's also a very very important message of who of you want to really go into this field 90% of data we have is on language production Okay, and most of this 90% is really single word Okay, and there are many linguists who actually say that single word is not language, okay, but Listening to narratives like in this case is actually considered language I hope you agree with me on this at least yes But it's the same. This is a funny thing that even even in a totally different paradigm as a listening to two Narratives in this case. It was listening to short stories, which were taken from Liberty Prans Okay, the little Prince and in which the story could change the language, okay from Italian to to French The switch activates the same areas we have seen for those language production pair of lines Okay, you see that you see here the same Co-late activity and the ACC activity here Okay, so this language control network is universal for language production and language comprehension And also here Switching into the weaker language was associated to a much wider network of language control. They're not the reverse What we have seen in all this year is that we always find two very very highly consistent findings in our neuro imaging Experiments we always find the activity of the left code 8 and of the anterior single cortex So one question was if really this two areas are specific for bilingualism In in the case of the left code 8 We are really blessed with our patients, okay? Because subcortical structures are highly susceptible to vascular disease like strokes in the human brain Okay, so we also find many patients who have selectively vascular lesions for instance in the left code 8 That was actually the first patient I ever observed. I was still a medical student. That's the reason why I came to this field Okay, it was a 74 year old lady who was admitted to the hospital of our University by then and Put straightly into the psychiatric department because no one would understand what she is actually talking Okay, I thought she has an acute schizophrenia crisis or whatever, okay, and thanks God they asked the neural to the neurology consultant to come and check her and But then it was my former professor. So he took me with him and then I realized This lady is not crazy. She's just mixing three languages One of my two languages is Farsi, which is very close to Armenian So I could understand. Well, this this one is a mixing English Armenian and Italian So and then we ask the CT scan and what we saw is a very very small Leisure which you see here. It's on the left side Around the code 8 nucleus so this this poor lady had not anymore any control of her languages But she would just mix everything Which is a good index of language the language control system is impaired And then many other cases like like her which have which have been described In the literature If you have some time if I finished this part in time In a second part we can talk about the bilingual aphasia, which is also a very very interesting topic. Okay, this is just another patient of ours again Subquarticle lesion and this young boy was not anymore able to to control language output Okay, and in this case, it's even more interesting because switching was not Because his language output was not restricted only to pathological switching Like you see here, but also to mixing. Okay Language mix is actually a change of languages that that occurs within One word. Okay, and if you see here, the voice says I have cried. I cried. Okay, I've cried. Okay, but he uses the The dutch prefix which is linked to the english verb. Okay, that's that's very very bizarre We call this pathological pathological language mixing and switching But I guess all of you know that Some language switching is even physiological. Okay in in small infants, you know better than me switching is something typical like Till the age of two or three usually children don't realize that there are two different language systems. Okay So they don't keep them separate and interesting to know that The prefrontal cortex comes to full maturation around the age of two or three And once that area comes to full maturation, usually the switching phenomena stop in In child speech Except if the poor child doesn't know the item in the other language So he will still use he still will still switch and the other very important observation is In in aging even in healthy aging once the prefrontal cortex, which is one of the first areas going into physiological atrophy Went a little bit away elderly subjects start to do switching And of course, there are also societies in which language switching is totally common I don't know. I don't know about Barcelona if you switch often between catalan and And spanish very much. Okay. Yes. Yes Like for instance, most of our subjects in milan come from south t-roll, which is a german speaking region of Italy but they usually don't switch between between german and And italian But if you go to other Populations like in the in the philippines, that's so amazing The official language is tagalog. Okay, philippino and the other official language or second language is english And if you go at the atm and you need some money, you have three options English tagalog and taglish, okay, which is a mix of english and tagalog and people really speak speak like this And later when I explain to the adaptive control model, we'll talk about those those populations who Frequently switch. Yes Or because it's induced by a lesion because the because the subject wouldn't speak Like this if you wouldn't have the lesion. Yes Yes, yes, you yes This is uh, yeah, this um bleeding in his brain. Yes. Yes Excellent question, uh, it's it's implicated in uh, in naming of course It's not per se a language area. Um, it's piss hence Its lesion usually doesn't give uh problems in in in language, but there are some interesting papers There's a very nice paper very old from uh Kaplan also and the other one from derenzi who showed that lesions of of the codate or of the talamus May lead to some specific Naming difficulties like category Difference as one one of the cases was very beautiful. It was a surgeon who had a specific naming deficit for surgical items Yes, so it it may be involved in this in this network that has uh, that that has to select The correct alternative during, uh, uh, virgin rations Well, you will see it. No, I will I will show you the next slide is Uh There's a nice experiment in which we contrast by language to mono language and we study that uh that area In the case of the acc, uh It's not so easy because god has really created the most perfect area in our brain It's difficult to find Lesions in an area because it receives a vascularization from different branches of arteries in the brain So it's really protected. Okay. So we we we don't have case studies to see What a lesion in that area would lead to to what linguistic deficit we would have So in order to study this the, uh Codate and the acc We use this experiment here In this case, we were not working with by language, but we were working with trial language Okay speakers of three languages And the nice thing the nice thing was that One of the two second languages for was a very highly mastered highly Highly mastered language. So it was a high proficiency and the other second language which I call here l3 Was a very weak language. So I can also study Differences of proficiency between different second languages Okay, and in the same experiment we had also mono language And the bilinguals as you probably will understand have to do this picture naming task in which the color of The picture would really Incode the language to use. Okay, and we had two separate runs and one run. I would ask them, okay Now you have to name pictures In l1 and l2, okay They know which color to use and in the other run we have two different colors for l1 and l3 Okay, and the mono language have to do a noun and verb Generation task, okay, because that's the closest that can come to language switching with In by language, it's not a perfect task, but I can do otherwise a switching task and mono language so That did all this Experiment and then we measured The boat effect plot oxygen level dependent effect in The code eight the left code eight and in the acc which You can see here. This is the one for the left code code eight and As you see in the context l1 and l2 switching okay switching l1 l2 L2 engages a little bit more of the left code eight Okay If I'm in a context where I have l1 and the weak second language like l3, okay l3 of course needs much more code eight activity Okay, because it has to inhibit stronger l1, which is pre potent at a time But l1 production goes without Any code eight activity? I don't need it. Okay, because I'm I probably because l3 is probably so weak that I don't need to actively inhibit it Okay, but the most interesting thing is if you see the plot Oxygen dependent effect of mono language. I'm here. There's a total deactivation Okay, so this noun verb switching goes without any inhibition without any language control Okay, so in this case I can I think I can Trust was to say that the code eight activity is In some way specific to bilingual language processing A totally different story is uh when it comes to the acc Okay The most important finding here the most interesting finding is if you compare l1 Okay in both contexts to Monolinguals, which is the l1. It's the same Okay, so it's really constant among native language Uh production But there's a difference For l3 the weak second language I really have strongly monitor a weak language And it's less For a second language a highly proficient second language. We're just a very striking Finding and I actually have no no clue why I need less activity for this highly proficient second language Then compared to the first language. Okay. It's very interesting But I find it really beautiful to see that for l1 here l1 here and mono lingual It's exactly the same So what I can really say about the acc. It is not specific Okay, it is not specific to bilingualism and we we all use it during During language probably to the same degree, but if I'm a bilingual one second or if I'm a bilingual and I use a And not so highly proficient language. I need more acc activity. Yes Yes, we have I may show you later. Yes Hello, I don't see you Now I see you Yeah for for monitoring well I'm happy if you tell me Yes, that would be right, but this this area has nothing to do with innovation and activation It's really only about monitoring like Detecting potential conflicts, but it has nothing to do with really conflict resolution So the question would be why do I need less Activity for monitoring my second language By the way, this is really a highly fluent second language We'll talk about this also later, but in this case, I have a German first language an Italian second language The third language is English. Yes How do we measure proficiency? You ask better, uh, all people here, I guess Some of you are psycholinguist linguists, not We measure proficiency with psycholinguistic tests like, uh, really batteries standard batteries in this case we Have also picture naming tasks. We have translation tasks And some standardized battery, but there is a really common Procedure as I mentioned before I seldomly use self-reported questionnaires because I find them very subjective But I have to measure them because uh, I have also I can also correlate proficiency to brain activity So it's a very very important measure More questions on this This experiment which would we have done with uh, professor costa is too complicated to explain you, but I just uh, uh, Maybe maybe maybe you can't do it The paradigm was really complicated But I love the message of it or this message because it shows that the language control system is really divided into two Subparts and one of it is the acc Which acts a little bit as uh, you know all shellis, uh, sas model So it acts a little bit as a supervisory attentional system Okay, and of course now is the question we come down to the to the second part Okay, what relation is there was what I've shown you now to the so-called bilingual advantage. Okay So I started with you what is in your opinion a bilingual advantage As a huge discussion in the field and people are killing each other really Really it became so unfriendly recently What is a bilingual advantage Come on. I saw there are some people from edinburgh here. So you must know these things Well, that's the kind of advantage of course, but you know when when people call about bilingual advantage They always have something in mind It's even not about aging mostly For me, this is the best advantage and I will just keep it there because I can talk to languages I can have more friends. I can have more social activities. That's a huge That's a huge advantage of my life actually probably I get even better jobs because I speak to two languages But usually in the field, but the bilingual advantage is really limited to this Really hotly debated issue of Is a bilingual faster is a bilingual faster on an executive task than a mononym world, okay, and There's a huge discussion in this field and also here in Barcelona. There are a lot of studies done about this I will talk about this, but of course, there are also some bilingual disadvantages Do you know some of them vocabulary What What's that explain it to me? Yeah, but then this would lead to a so-called advantage So I wouldn't I wouldn't see that as a disadvantage But these advantages, of course, as you said Usually, but there are also exceptions to this, of course, but usually The single lexicon of a bilingual is smaller than the monolingual lexicon Okay, but of course the sum of two lexicans should be bigger than a monolingual lexicon but in whatever simple naming task A bilingual is always slower than a monolingual. Okay Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Okay, so and And this was called as Disadvantage and it's also not uncommon to see that bilingual children Maybe a little bit slower during language acquisition. Okay, like Fred, you will talk much better on this. Okay, but there's this common, you know, belief But my point is even if it's six months slower or not, who who peers by the age of six or seven That will be probably the same and then once they're 70 you have all these advantages coming out Like I just said, when you talk about children and it reinforces an earlier point you made You have to be very careful to consider both age of acquisition Efficiency and exposure because Absolutely. Yes. Someone who's still developing the system. Yeah So all of those students matter. So when people talk about Disadvantage or disadvantage of children, they're usually overstable Because they're putting all of these children into one basket Yes That's absolutely. Yes. So there are a lot of methodological issues with this and Fred, you're totally right. And of course, I'm now over Generizing it but You would see if you go back to this discussion of cognitive advantage that like 10 years ago 12 years ago Most of the studies would report for whatever Age range that the bilingual is faster on those conflict resolution tasks. Okay, even in in children in young adults in aging subjects But then a couple of years ago, uh, they feel changed. Okay, researchers are starting reporting, uh, null effects Okay, no evidence of bilingual Advantage in those tasks, especially for adults and also For children, okay In the aging population, we still most of the papers show advantages. Okay, and Virginia valiant from new york state of rhoda very nice keynote article On this topic in our in our journal and she actually makes a nice Observation, why do we still see advantages in the aging population not anymore in the younger population? Okay, and her point is that Younger subjects are exposed to a lot of other Different challenges and cognitive activities that equally may enhance cognitive conflict conflict of control and all the all the things while usually The aging population especially once they retire. They don't use maybe They don't they're not any more exposed to so many other cognitive advantages But if they still speak to languages, then the effect of language Is much more evident in that population. Okay, that's Maybe one, uh, one, uh, good answer to this topic My point is actually totally different. I actually don't care about the cognitive advantage Do you think that it makes any It has any sense in our life if i'm 10 milliseconds faster in pressing a button, uh on on conflict resolution It doesn't make any difference my life. Okay I'm if i'm slower, I wouldn't be considered a psychopath So and and and the same also about the bilingual disadvantage Who cares if i become slower 10 or 20 milliseconds and naming a picture. Okay, it doesn't make any difference in my everyday life. Okay, so All these articles always like opinionated trying to say Why are they confusing about right and wrong? Yeah, basically I've seen this article and this has to be a foundation as far as that I say that, uh, normally, uh, bilinguals when they speak to a second language They're less and much stronger. Like they tend to be like more objective things and more So I think I was wondering like when I read the article, I thought, what without the label did he create? Professor Wotolabie has learned a lot from professor Costa on this, uh, but On this because he has done some beautiful studies on on this, uh, argument and, uh And it's true. Actually, um, Albert wrote on some, uh, studies like you make much more rational decisions in your second language because it's less affected by emotion That that's right. And uh, Albert, you told me once that, uh, someone in in Brussels in the european committee made this joke about, uh, all, uh, british representatives because they are they're mostly monolinguals and and everyone else speaks english. Okay, so, uh, uh, The decisions made by, uh, mainland europeans are much more rational than not the decisions by the british folks and you see now is brexit, I guess, so Sorry for insulting anyone who comes from from from british. That's a joke. But but it's true. I mean, uh, you can ask later professor Costa He has done a lot of studies there, so it's it's true.  I'm actually not, okay I'm much more interested what happens in the brain and not, uh, at the behavior difference of 10 milliseconds, okay and The whole lesson will be, uh, uh, uh, about the brain, so you will see it later. Okay so As I mentioned, I'm much more interested in in, uh, seeing what happens if we speak two or three languages, uh, to the brain Uh, the implications is that, um, if bilinguals use much more those contour areas the monolinguals Some sort of brain plasticity should happen in our brain Okay, and bilinguals bilingualism is not an exception. Okay, brain plasticity may happen because of many other activities Okay, if I do a lot of sports, I will have changes in my brain if I do if I play a musical instrument I will have changes in my brain. Okay, so bilingualism is just one Okay of those activities And here I come back to the two, uh Pictures you have seen images you have seen before. Okay, like this was, uh, a bilingual Frequently in a bimodal, uh, in a bilingual, um, uh, mode and this is also a bilingual but Uh In a monolingual mode, okay, and I told you before that, uh, this may have a Difference in the brain Okay, the amount of time you spend in, uh, with two languages or not And specifically for that I actually saw there's one poster talking about the adaptive control model Who of you is presenting it? What's your name? You said it's still very contentious You mentioned you mentioned in your abstract it's still very contentious No, maybe maybe it's on you. I will check check check later one. It's just a joke. It don't don't think it's serious, okay Okay, so the model was actually, uh, created to show that, uh, um Different experience that have different, uh, uh Implications on the whole control network. Okay, like this would be just, uh, a summary of The whole network which you have seen, um, before, okay You see the speech pipeline in it and the control network and In order to see actually how this network changes Upon the context We made a very nice experiment in, uh, in china in guangzhou okay Guangzhou is in, uh, south china and, uh native language Is cantonese and not mandarin but of course, uh, all All people usually speak also mandarin especially and in the working place. Okay, and here we took, um workers from the university, uh of guangzhou The day before they were leaving for The one month summer break holidays and immediately this the very day they came back from the holidays Okay, and what happens during holidays they're not anymore speaking mandarin because they go to the families who live in in this in Guangdong is actually called the area where cantonese is, uh The original language So we have two different conditions in such an experiment Before the holidays they would Speak equally frequently mandarin and cantonese Okay, but when they come back from their one month holiday They were much more exposed up to 90 percent to Cantonese and not to mandarin Okay So if I started them before and after I can see how Eventually the brain and the control network adapts to the to these two different conditions Okay, it's very similar to the experiment you have seen before I have a bilingual context and I have a monolingual context During the experiment our staff just had to tell us, uh Some sub stories of what they have done the day before at midday and dusk and at night. Okay, so it's it's really a Speech production task, okay What you see here is Brain activity, okay represented as bars In different areas like the right Prefrontal cortex by now, you know, it's in both the sponsor inhibition Barocas area, which is not a language control area, but it's a language production area And left code 8 which is the area that allocates control to the other areas. Okay And you have condition 1 is prior to the holidays and condition 2 After the differential exposure And you see some important changes. Okay L2 is mandarin, okay, which is not a native language and you see After the holidays They drive much more The response inhibition area whenever they have to speak mandarin.  Okay, you need just a couple of days then becomes the same. Okay Perfect, we are going to scan your brain And the interesting thing is, uh, you find also differences in Proper area as I mentioned, it's not involved in language control It's involved in production that the brain has to drive it much more After this one month period. Okay And the same we find also for uh, the left codate, which was actually more activated Before for a native language, but after the holidays for the second language Another thing we did in this study was to correlate language exposure, which will Measure it, okay in condition to to brain activity in Broglie's area and you see there's a nice coloration Okay, and also to the to the left, uh, anterior single cortex. Okay So in other words, really the context in which we are, okay the amount of uh, of Influence we have from two languages Makes has a difference. Okay has an impact on the language control network And the whole story of the adaptive control network was about that It is there's nothing to do with cognitive advantages. Yes or no, okay It's just only to to explain how The control network is differently engaged and how it adapts to different circumstances And in the original paper, we we have three different interactional contexts. Okay And of course different control processes because language control is not just language control But as you see there are different sub components of language control like goal maintenance You have interference control Which includes conflict monitoring interference suppression Sailing cue detection Selective response inhibition task disengagement task engagement. Okay, those are actually carried out by the left by the parietal inferior lobul And we have to support domestic planning Okay in a single language context like our subjects who are now In holidays, okay just speaking one one language There's the two sub components mostly activated Our goal maintenance and interference control Okay Well, when we are in a context where we commonly use two languages Like it would be actually in Barcelona. Okay. There's a lot of switching like And as a bilingual context where you usually really change from one language to the to the other you have almost all Of the sub components involved in language Control, okay, that's why we activated much more In a dense code switching context, okay Which is the case for instance of the Philippines which I made you before where really people Always switch so much that it almost becomes a single language Okay, I don't use anymore All the sub components the only thing my brain uses is opportunistic planning Okay, because in some way The speech has to be planned in the subjects Okay And we know in some recent experiments that this activity is actually carried out by the cerebellum Okay, that's the reason why we added this area to our new uh, to the update of our of our model You see it here like The internet the international context, okay translated now into the brain would activate much more those Collections, okay While the dense code switching context would activate much more the pathway from the left from the right cerebellum to the left preform cortex Well in some way if you if you really switch Constantly your languages really like it happens in the Philippines or other Populations in some way you have to have a sort of planning want to put The verb in what what language? Uh, if you respect the constant fumes of sentence or not and this has to be Planned in the brain You have also other extremes Even a pigeon language as a dense code switching language But that would be the most extreme case in which probably the language not anymore considered two languages But just a single language Okay Yes Exactly it just goes automatically, but you know product I don't have the evidence, but I would Supposed that probably it's also based on on those cerebellum in some way because it's it's it's Structure involved in coordination and all the same. So it may it's dramatic in children because they're still acquiring These systems these are talking about children Uh, 18-20 more months later depends on when they start to combine words But as soon as they start to combine words You have to make concessions for the fact that they don't know all the constraints. Yes, but as far as we can tell They just don't why they they certainly observe the word word order constraints if they differ They won't code mix for example if the word order in the two languages is different They only code mix if the word order is the same And if they do violate it's probably because there's a dominant language Context so to using that yeah, it's it's it's it's it's it's fascinating actually Yes It also means It's also interesting to see then how once they grow a little bit older how they really start separating it Well, but the fact that they're observing them again means already that they're separating Because in order to coordinate them properly, they have to be separated. Yes, so they never These are simultaneous Fascinating So we're coming up to this Study which as I studied in In india in which we were looking for white matter differences between bilinguals and monolinguals I'm not going into detail of this study, but I wanted just to show you That It looks so so so nice to see we have the same differences where we actually postulate A The differences in the model. Okay, so the very same connections in real life are much more in this case bilinguals would have much more White matter in this in this connections than monolinguals Okay, and this this bilinguals we studied I actually they live in a very very strong interactional context in india They speak fluently Hindi and english and and I don't know who of you have ever been in india but Students actually really switch from one language to the other. It's not a dense code switching Context, but it's a highly interactional Context and the result is really that you increase The white matter. Okay For this connections This is typical in italy. All right Accommodate you to it. Yes. Uh, watch us the example There will be a part on white matter and gray matter. Yes Ah white matter Yeah, okay Well in the brain. I mean our brain except of of the liquor we have White matter and gray matter white matter are all fibers actually. Okay connecting Neurons connecting the cortex and subcortical structures What gray matter are actually neurons like the cortex and those small subcortical Structures so you see here Like all gray here are neurons.  Okay So and I can measure this as I will show you later I can measure the density of gray matter and the density also of of white matter Okay, and it's a good index of brain plasticity as we will see So we have this scenarios very often in italy Okay, uh, maybe also in spain. I don't know, but I've never seen them in germany. Okay, you just Maybe you have someone really uh, what's coming up? You have to bring to the hospital Pop your pump in the street and you see those signs. Wow. Where's the hospital left or right? Okay So you have to make a very fast, uh, uh decision here. Okay That's a real real life example of for instance the flunker task. Okay, which we which we very often use for Investigating, uh, the so-called cognitive advantage or disadvantage of binomialism Um The flunker task as as you may know Substance is asked to pay attention to the center arrow. Okay Of a series of five arrows Okay, if the flunker arrows point to the same direction, okay, like the central one. It's called a congruent trial Okay, if the flankers point to a different direction, it's called an incongruent Trial, okay, and you can even have an experiment usual trials. Okay, if I subtract congruent trials from incongruent trials, I have the so-called conflict effect. Okay, and it's a good index of conflict resolution, okay, behaviorally So it's and it's might be used to to study Uh, uh, if a group of subjects is faster than a different group of of subjects, okay There are a lot of other tasks, uh, who who are based on on a on a similar, uh, um Paranyme like this assignment task and even the go-no-go stoop tasks They are they're all they have all something in common in which you have to make a decision at least, okay And what you measure is uh accuracy and response time The brain areas involved in the such Conflicts is essentially the same as you see here that is involved in language control, okay so and we can use such a paradigm also for our, um, brain, uh, imaging experiments in this Should we have make a coffee break it because it was written at 1130 as a coffee break at 1130 not 1030 Well, what's the what's the time now? 10 for example, my watch is wrong and chose me 11, uh, 20 just just an okay Good So we can still go on So we use this paradigm to to compare at the brain level, okay monolingual versus bilinguals again our monolinguals were, uh, fluent german italian speakers from south, you know Our bilinguals and our my monolinguals were from milan so monolingual italian speakers and you see in this picture here that for doing such a task monolinguals Activate much more in the brain in especially to see here the acc and in the code eight Okay, and activating more during a cognitive task Is always considered something more Rated to being effortful more difficult All right, okay because for the cognitive for the cognitive task the less Uh, the less brain area you use The more efficient your brain works It may not be the same for motor or sensory or visual task. Okay, but for cognition, okay it's really uh, uh, the Many sides have shown it that the less reactivate for a given task. Okay the better this Okay, of course having the same performance like your control group But the interesting thing is we did this experiment In two separate separate runs with our subjects, okay Each run was around 10 minutes long. We had we had a lot of stimuli even in one single run to Just analyze one run and publish the data. Okay, and he you may probably see why I don't care about All this is custom about the cognitive advantage, but I'm more interested into the brain.  This is a behavioral conflict effect. Okay response times If I would analyze and I've published only the first run of my experiment, I would say there's no difference Okay monolinguals by limits Uh The same reaction times. Okay, there's no difference. Okay, and I would publish a paper saying There's no bilingual advantage. Okay And it was enough the data was really enough to to publish it. You see a real difference only for a second run Okay, but it was become faster Moral limits do not become significantly faster. Okay, and the difference between the first and second run is significant by limits But it is not in But I'm even not interested in this. Okay, this may be I could label it by limits adapt better to conflicts. Okay Yes you imagine This experiment here you We have more than a hundred Trials of this in last 10 minutes. Okay, then there's a two minute break and then I'll do it again. Okay And of course all trials are always randomized, but I run it again. Okay, and what you see here is is the effect Of the second run. Okay, so in one case one group adapts better to a conflicted situation and the other one not so much Okay, but still As I told you I'm not interested even in this but I'm interested in this and what happens in their brain. Okay the first run Okay in bilinguals as compared to monolinguals. Okay, and keep in your mind. There's no behavioral difference Nor in response times nor in accuracy Okay, but there's a huge brain difference Okay by liberals not not activate so much of their monitoring area The ACC has to monolinguals All right, so This is for me a neural disadvantage if I would use these terms. Okay In the second run becomes much more evident Okay, it's still gets a little bit less Okay, but here it's more extended Okay, so the hampering limit Was here and I can translate this old activity also in in in bars. Okay First run for bilinguals As a little bit of the ACC, but it is much less than the first run of monolinguals in the second run. It's actually not any more Activity it's almost deactivated They do it much more automatically. Okay, but here you see still the activity so just to summarize I'm really More fascinated by by these effects in the brain than not by these effects Let's go now to some experiments done with structural neuroimaging. Okay, which is in my opinion the most powerful to study neuroplasticity And because it's not about brain activity And I'm not looking here for my activity, but I'm looking for structural changes. And as I mentioned before structural change in the brain Is related to increase or decrease of gram-matter Where our cells and synapses are Or to increases or decreases of white matter Where the fibers are where the connections are okay, we can study this very very smoothly with some news fancy techniques The first study that was actually published by using this technique, okay, which is called voxel based morphometry Uh whilst the study was london taxi drivers. Do you know this study? You ever heard of this? You said yes, so you will explain to us No the woman behind it. Yes, you don't look away. Yes I have to keep your attention high You got it? After you show that you're Cheers, why you take because it was just simply about testing the taxi drivers versus normal controls To see what the differences in brain are and there's not one group That by McIron, I really saw that taxi drivers are specifically in the right area Much And you must know that the right pericampus gyrus is our is our internal The root the right pericampus gyrus is our internal gps Okay So and it makes a lot of sense that taxi drivers have developed really well this area. So it's just yes The study was published in 2000. So it was done probably 98 Just keep in mind by that So this maybe today will be a little bit different But by that trust me taxi drivers will know each corner of the of the city So and it makes a sense in the area That's why It's a very same one I've had good as a dynamic And or Always But it it wasn't it's a beautiful experiment and it was opposed to open actually this whole line of research studying the effects of practice or experience upon brain structure Uh, they are there are two different approaches actually for using this technique. Okay on the one hand you can Uh get two groups Okay, what differences in in uh in one skill and you compare them on a whole brain basis And you just see where in the brain is a difference. Okay And the other approach is a region of interest analysis, okay That you just analyze one specific region of the brain you extract The values of the brain matter, okay And compared between the groups the second approach if you do it You must have of course a very very strong a priori hypothesis If not, no one will accept the accepted for publication. Okay, like we could do it With a language control network. I could say I want to see what happens in the left called eight I would have a very strong A priori hypothesis, okay, but the best approach is actually doing both of them. Okay in this case in in the same group of bilinguals and more than once of the previous experiment The real whole brain difference was in actually the ACC. Okay Which makes sense. We saw also a functionally this functional activity difference there and I if I would extract Okay Of that region great meta data. Okay, I would see this difference. Well, this would be the region of uh of interest analysis Okay, and another nice thing Methodologically, which which you can do which is even nicer. So you study much better plasticity is if you have behavioral data You can correlate your behavioral data to gray matter density In this case as you see here For both bilinguals and monolinguals There was a nice correlation with gray matter density of the ACC in the sense The subjects who were faster On the flanker task Had more and increased gray matter density in that specific area of the ACC. Okay, but the nice thing was That this correlation was significant only for bilinguals and not for monolinguals in a manner that Gray matter density can predict performance of bilinguals but not of monolinguals The first study in our field Okay, uh using this Technique actually, okay with bilinguals. We're talking now was actually done also in London by McKelley and uh and colleagues Who investigated a group of bilinguals and compared them to monolinguals? Okay, and uh Then I think the nice finding was they found increased gray matter density in the left inferior right rule of rule Which is this area here. Okay, so you must know that Uh, it's part of the contra lateral, but it's also an area involved in in uh in a lexicon, okay There's some nice studies showing that Uh If you increase your lexicon like we're learning, uh, you have wonderful effects in that area Okay, so it's also involved in that in that aspect. Okay and something I have to say, uh, it's Always because this paper was nicely published in as a letter in nature. Okay Calling this area as a as a new As a new discovery, okay But this is the only negative aspect of it because it's a very nice paper. We should always keep history in our Not only heart but also mind, okay Because we can learn a lot from from from history The authors did not know that Almost a hundred years earlier eight years earlier. There was a german neologist called pretzel Who published about this area and labeled it as the multilingual talent area Okay, there was no mention of it And it was after when I spoke to him he he said to me he didn't know this paper. Okay um By then, okay, this german neologist she served, uh many patients in world war One the big wall, okay with bullet wounds to that area if they were by levels they could not or might I was they could not switch anymore Okay, and he and some some other Researchers after him labeled this area really as the multilingual talent area Okay, so there was no mention of this paper, but it doesn't matter. It's a beautiful paper because they did something else Which is wonderful. They correlated language proficiency and Separately age of second language acquisition To grammar the density of that area And as you see here the higher your second language proficiency is the more grammar that you have in this area On the other hand, okay The earlier you learn Your second language the more grammar that you have in this area Okay, I will talk about this later when I show you some data on aging populations The other thing is Look at this now. I have to explain you this, okay this is a typical spec scan, okay it's method using nuclear medicine in clinics for making diagnosis of Uh people with cognitive impairment that may eventually convert into Alzheimer's disease Okay And there's a specific feature that these patients have, okay It's hyper metabolism of the parietal Okay, the same area where bilinguals have increased parameter as compared to monolinguals Okay, this is the area Which really if I see this on a scan and now oh This poor old man will probably convert once into Alzheimer's disease Okay So just keep this in mind for a second part of my lessons, okay The same area that McKellie has shown and before him putzler Uh We found it We found beautiful gravity changes in a follow-up study with children Okay, these children were all monolinguals Again from southeastern from the mountains and actually spoke four languages because there's another there's another language They speak in that region which which is Latin, okay? London is a sort of mix between French, German, Italian and some really Latin roots, okay? It's a it's one of the three official languages of Of southeastern children when they came the first time to us were around 8.5 if I remember well and they spoke All four languages They came back after year and what happened in this year is the proficiency for all four languages increased Which is normal because you grow one year you have schooling, okay? And we used the proficiency to correlate it and what did it also was Both times at time the uh at time point zero and t1 so after a year We we measured Their performance on the flanker task, okay, and we correlated we correlated We made an interaction between increasing language proficiency and Increasing performance or better performance on the flanker task And we found out the fact the higher your proficiency became the better you were on the flanker task, okay? In this specific Interaction correlated only with one brain area, which is the same area you have seen Here and here Okay, so in other words in 1925 puzzle was not wrong Labeling this area as the monthly will talent area, okay, and imagine they had no techniques like we have today, okay? So it was a very very acute observation Yes, no just one one one one one one because uh the problem is Uh, uh, if you use a group like a children, okay eight years old two runs is too much for It would be 20 minutes. They would lose really a concentration on it. So just just one run is Sophisticated. It's really difficult And yes, uh, with that you can do it even with uh, uh aging populations was with 80 or children Two months of a flanker would be really too much It would be interesting I know and the other thing could be you could ask me, okay But within the one run you could compare the first trials or last trials But it would not be enough trials to to to make this a comparison, but your point is really excellent I mean it would be interesting to see how children would adapt to complex like the adults that yes Well what sorry over some noise So have your tradition, right? What do you mean by language attrition speakers who lose one language? Okay We actually have no detail about really language attrition in this field But um on the other hand, uh, we can make some statements about uh by labels who Especially during the age of population put on any more exposed and less proficient in the second language Than before they lose They lose their uh, uh, behavioral performance and also in the brain and on that I have some data that I will show Show later, but unfortunately there is no study yet That really studies like I mean, I know there's a whole group of uh people studying language attrition with very sensitive batteries linguistic ventures, but there's no study really Correlating the outcomes of those batteries to for instance productivity or brain structure, but it will be highly interesting Especially now because we live in a world of globalization. There's also immigration and and uh immigrants usually Lose one of their two languages The native language and would be nice to see even what effect that has upon the brain This slide is just to show you that uh, even different kind of The type of bilingualism has also an effect on the brain In this in this study, we compared by model by language So I eat by language who Use a sign language and the spoken language to Spoken monolinguals even in that case we find uh, uh differences in the brain There are many other studies, okay? Um Um Yeah Yes, yes, okay. I think that's really both My my opinion is it's really both because there is nice data that if you increase your proficiency even functional later, uh, that Uh, it's correlated to the activity in the inferior parietal lobe as there is also data on executive Functioning and the parietal lobe. I think it's really involved in both functions and uh, of course if you ask me Your subjects have to increase the gray matter in that area because of increasing proficiency or or of increasing Or better performance on the on the conflict task The answer is the interaction of those two correlated to gray matter Similarly, none of them did in in our group I also have forgot to tell you something very important because if you have such a follow-up study with children You have of course correct your brain data With uh, with what happens during normal development Because it's absolutely, uh, uh, obvious that in a one year span Even in normal conditions children will have an increase of gray matter Okay, but you can calculate this this difference in the one year and you have to correct them. Uh, those those data Yes Yeah, I will come later to it never do differences. It's a very very brand new topic and it's highly interesting. Uh, uh, we have some data Which we publish, you know Together it's very interesting. But uh At that time people wouldn't look Okay, because the the the methodological approach was really you have a group of subjects The more they are the better it is because of statistical power You just group them together you normalize them to one template brain and then then you compare them to a different group Okay In this of course this approach you don't look at individual differences But don't worry. I have some data nice data in which we look actually at individual differences which on in turn Have some nice implications. Okay, so This slide suggests to uh, it's just to summarize that there are many other studies done. Okay The compare Structurally by limits to mono language and most of the differences People Report is some way correlated to the language control network And uh from here actually we Is actually the the collection What about the neuro cognitive repercussions? Okay, I use much more this this areas hands I have more gray matter or white matter increase in this area and may this One day protect my brain against cognitive decline And against brain atrophy on the other hand, okay There are two different aspects which was which we'll see Okay And here I answered your question about individual differences. Okay before I go to the aging. Okay Uh, there's some evidence in the literature that Uh, some subjects have a so-called Parasimulate Suckers Which is you see here this blue Suckers here. Okay. The one in yellow is the singular suckers. Okay, which divides the singular cortex Which you see here from The rest of the brain. Okay on top of it, but some subjects have This Parasimulate subjects not all okay It may be present just okay It must be longer than two centimeters or it may be even prominent if it's really long. Okay And the other thing is in some subjects. It is symmetrical So left and right have the same feature of the suckers and it may be even be asymmetrical Okay, so There are some papers published in last years on mononimals, especially on Children that report that if you have a sort of asymmetry it is associated to Better performance on executive task Okay, that's it's very interesting. I was skeptical too because this feature brain feature is actually Or it's already present at birth and it will not modify. Okay, it's predetermined It's okay against it goes also against my own Environmental beliefs or whatever, but it's interesting. Let me have to take it into account So there are not sometimes works to show that really if you have an asymmetrical pattern It is associated to better performance on executive task. Okay, so Uh When uh professor costa was once in paris and saw a presentation of Of these people doing this kind of research He just wrote me an email or don't be analyzed Our data was bilinguals and moral it was to see this uh circle pattern Okay, we did and it's Very very interesting the outcome. These are all individual subjects. Okay Look at this. Okay The same experiment you have seen before the one with the adults south sterol in which we had two separate flanker sessions. Okay I must tell you we had only very few subjects with Rightward asymmetry only three. So we discarded them because there was not enough power But we have enough uh subjects with symmetrical patterns of the pro-singular circles and was left for asymmetry. Okay We separated the two flanker sessions and for leftward asymmetry monolinguals actually outperform bilinguals Okay for symmetrical patterns of this paris and with uh, uh Circus bilingual uh bilinguals outperform monolinguals All right, so this is very interesting and in the second session still monolinguals would outperform bilinguals if they have a leftward asymmetry and The same reaction as in session one is also for session two present for bilinguals. Okay So it's highly interesting. Okay, so we're starting really uh publishing this but of course there's not yet a solution to it much more data But it's a good beginning of what you actually mentioned. Okay, if we look at individual differences So the answer is actually not yet. We're starting to do it. I think there's highly interesting data Surely we'll uh add much more to the confusion that already rains in this field, but that's fun. Yes I'm wondering if it seems to be in innate Is it really this sort of implies that the bottom I'm wondering about the implication in terms of cause and effect It's possible that if you're born with the same symmetry Then that somehow affects your executive functions, which in turn has some effect on your bilingualism And there's a notion that it's bilingualism That's creating advantage. Yes, but but there's another nice implication because um For now the system data on modeling was always reported that you You have to have this advantage in your asset And and one That's just one of one of the ideas Supposition of conjecture But it's Point was really to look also on individual brain differences, but if you look we look of course on individual cognitive differences But we never actually looked on individual neuro differences. So that may be start of it But as I mentioned probably will add much more to the confusion that we already have in the field Let's come out to a healthy aging We wonderful upcoming reaching the age of 100 years and being still happy and drinking smoking and having fun maybe whatever so There's of course some common sense in saying That structural neuro major research like the one you've seen before Is suggesting that during healthy aging the human brain Brain might matter is well maintained up until I would say the age of 60 70 it's it's changing because the older we grow We are much more also exposed to much more cognitive challenging activities. So our brains are healthier and healthier. Maybe 50 years ago A 60 year old brain would be much more Atrophic than not today. Okay, because we have much more activities than Than 50 years ago Just just check this. Okay like Two different curves one for white matter and one for gray matter. Okay density and age, okay in The decline of gray matter Which is age written is very very gradually going down While the one for white matter has it's actually a sort of It stops at a certain time. Okay, and then it goes very very Properly down. Okay, that's interesting to see that it stops at a certain time Maybe because between the age it's between 45 and 60 I would say here humans are at the height of their I'll say occupational activity So you make much more connections by then, okay You have a question Don't don't don't be like this Okay And you see also here Just comparison between a 20 year old male and the 80 year old male The brain starts starts to go into atrophy especially on the prefront cortex The size shrinks a little bit. Okay, that's totally physiological. Okay. That's what we call this aging At the same level behaviorally Age and cognitive function, okay We divide into four different Categories like no cognitive impairment. Okay the older you grow you may have some mild cognitive impairment. Okay, that's when your grandparents cannot find easily The words they want to say the names of options of persons. Okay, that's usually a mild cognitive Impairment. Okay, if it gets much more severe, then you may have a mild dementia Which usually is a Alzheimer disease or there are other types of dementia. One is called frontotemporal Dementia. Okay, because it selectively affects the frontal lobe and the temporal pole And there's also a third entity very very common, which is called vascular dementia. Okay, it's a cognitive impairment related to Usually small vessel disease of the brain. So you have a lot of small infarctions of the brain They don't give sign to nothing important like motor or language deficit, but you start having memory problems. Okay and of course if Global cognitive function goes down you can end up also as a severe dementia Okay, and you can measure this of course clinically Stern from from new york is one of I guess the most prominent scientist and studying cognitive reserve in the brain Okay in 95 already. He made this beautiful Suggestion that The common clinical belief about dementia is that people who are better educated Or who are more intelligent. Okay, whatever you define intelligence. Okay, they call better with the onset of dementia In the sense that they are longer able to maintain a normal life Okay, compared to people who are less educated or less intelligent Okay, so there would be a delay of the onset. Okay, but At the same time he writes a paradoxically Once full-blown clinical dementia has developed The more educated intelligent People, okay often So comes to the disease more quickly Okay, do you have any explanation for this? Use your gray matter and white matter Yes It's not far away from the truth, but you form right in the way that I can understand what you mean Try to try again. Okay I made you I will make you an example. Okay. You have two different subjects both 75 years old and they have both the same Okay, the same performance of cognitive testing Okay The fact is that I just made this example. Okay, we have two subjects both aged around 75 Both have on cognitive testing which you do in clinics the same performance Okay One of them is highly educated like 15 years of schooling one only five years of schooling And what I was saying is that usually Only the highly educated has much more brain atrophy in his brain. They're not the less educated Okay You may find this at first. It seems a paradox. Okay, because you would expect him to have increased gray matter But it's not It is this is the very essence of cognitive reserve Okay, it means that he can probably or she Compensate better the loss of cells in the brain And that's what all the story is about Okay, but we would see this better in the next slides Look here on the epsilon axis. We have cognitive status Okay, and as an example of dementia. I just took your Alzheimer's disease Okay, you have two different curves one for Person with a low cognitive reserve and I will show you what a definition of cognitive reserve is and one was a high reserve Okay, so the person was high reserve Comes later, okay Dementia onset, but once he has the onset it is faster Then the person was low reserve Right Let's go to the definitions. Okay. I start first with cognitive reserve. Okay But cognitive reserve we actually mean differences in cognitive processes as a function of lifestyle intellectual activities and other environmental factors, okay, that can may explain differential susceptibility to functional impairment, okay like say education occupation Okay, they may all have differences on cognitive performance And cognitive reserve has of course also its neural basis Okay, which can be divided into brain reserve and into neural reserve Okay, brain reserve would be differences like in brain size or other Quantitative aspects like I mentioned before on gramata differences white matter differences. Okay That is to explain. Okay cognitive reserve While neural reserve would probably be the neural basis of cognitive reserve that involves more networks Errors are better connected Okay I usually Not divide them into cognitive reserve brain reserve and neural reserve I just divide them into cognitive reserve and neural reserve Okay, and neural reserve has to be then distinguished by a different Mechanism which is called neural compensation Okay, you know compensation would be What was that someone has someone has tummy ache Then uh In neuroscience you have also two different different models. One is called the passive model. Okay that considers again brain measurements as Substrator of cognitive reserve And the other one will be the active model that emphasizes the use of brain networks effectively like Connections. Okay, better connections usually Lead to better compensation. Okay One of the most widely technique used in Aging research is path scanning. Okay, positon emission tomography it is not Is easily done as uh MRI scanning also because it's uh, it's very uh, it uses uh A radioisotope. So it's also highly uh dangerous. You can't you're gonna do it. Uh, just each month just to check up Okay, subjects get injected by a radioisotope which can be linked to sugar. Okay Or to other molecules And with that you can you can study Um You can study the metabolism of the brain.  Okay As you see here, or if you use some Radioisotopes who are linked to specific molecules like dopamine You can study also in the brain where certain documents of pathway will rework. Okay So in aging you would have this typical. Okay pattern. Okay. This is just in healthy aging That there's no hyper metabolism. Okay, but the areas who are much more you see decrease in percent start Uh going towards the hyper metabolism are Parallel areas. Okay You may wonder I told you before the first area Okay going into atrophy is actually the the frontal lobe the frontal areas but as you see I don't have hyper metabolism here. Okay. This is how we compensate Physiological brain atrophy There's a model called PASA PASA posterior to anterior shift. Okay During aging Much of the functions that is carried out by brain areas In posterior areas will be shifted toward areas in the frontal lobes. Okay. That's the reason why I don't have here Hyper metabolism. I may have brain atrophy there, but not hyper metabolism. Okay, because this area compensates The loss the physiological loss of what happens more posteriorly in the brain Pat is used now since more than 25 years. Okay, and it provides a specific metabolic patterns For not only dementia, but also healthy healthy aging. Okay. This is a typical Pat analysis of Alzheimer's disease. Okay You see specifically This is not activation. This is really hyper metabolism. Okay. It just uses the same software, but it's not activity You see specifically we have hyper metabolism in both prior lobes Remember the same area of McKelley language talent area. Okay. This is typically seen in Alzheimer's disease Um Just a case study in a probable Alzheimer disease Okay, probable means that his clinical pattern doesn't allow us yet to make any certain diagnosis Okay, but if you see the pattern With with pat you see already here. There's less Metabolism. Okay With this software it looks looks like this It's almost almost sure that uh, he has not only probable but certain Alzheimer disease Okay We use it also for different kinds of dementia like frontal temporal dementia in that case the Hyper metabolism is not Imposed in posterior areas, but it is more in frontal areas. Okay That's why this dementia is called frontal temporal dementia. You see it here So it's a very nice technique and at the end of this part of lesson I will show you also an experiment we did with bilinguals and monoling was Alzheimer patients by using this technique Just to show you how a brain looks A brain from a frontal temporal dementia looks like. Okay, you see this is a frontal lobe. It's almost really Crank really down. Okay you see it also Some temporal areas here are missing and this would be his MR scan This is not normal, of course and I mentioned this Before with the other a slide we have seen when I was talking about the parietal area Uh Pat is used successfully in actually predicting. Okay, there's a good correlation. Okay, it's not 100% But it's almost 95% okay in those subjects who have a mild cognitive impairment It may predict who of them will convert or will not convert into Alzheimer disease Keep in mind that whenever we have uh subjects with mild cognitive impairment Typically half of them may convert into one day With a reasoning into Alzheimer disease, but not all of them. Okay, some will always remain Mild cognitive impairment I haven't recognized you. Welcome We met in Hong Kong. So she did the PhD in Hong Kong. So yes, say your question again. I was just Oh Jeans Wow It's a pity because I had a lot of slides on that and just discarded them because I thought it was too not appropriate for here No, there are also predictive powers of April E is the gene in in question that was specifically labels for Alzheimer disease It correlates Not only with PET data, but also with cognitive reserve Okay, that's a nice studies really Showing this beautiful correlations Even for who will convert or will not convert But I really yesterday night, uh, so then I discarded all slices with genes because I didn't know she was such into medical fetus now Coffee break. All right All right Before I restart Uh Is everything fine? Everyone is following especially Those of you haven't made any question. Do you want to ask something now? It's the right time. I'm here You made a lot of questions, but you can make another one. Yes No, you you made a lot of questions, but you're welcome But also who hasn't made any question yet just Ask Please more easily or more difficultly. Yes Well, I think it's okay Yes Well, isn't there saying that you gain nothing without effort? So No, I mean it's it's a good question, but uh The answer is actually of course, uh, it's probably more tiring more effortful controlling two languages Okay, that's on the one hand while you are slower on language Okay, but uh, you have some advantages maybe on the long term effect I think uh We maybe all agree that uh as a multilingual If you speak one of your languages, you you surely struggle a little bit more than a monolingual who has no interference from No other language so and uh Try you to speak uh a whole day in a second language and also in your first language. It is tiring Related to Yes, okay. Yes. It's tiring. Yes. Yes. So but what does it mean this tiring that you use a lot of those control areas in your brain? But because they use it it's like a muscle, okay Even if they always say don't compare your brain to a muscle, but in some in some instances you can compare it You use a lot those structures so, uh Physiologically they have to develop better you you make more synapses In that structures, so you develop them better Even driving around London with a taxi is something very tiring if you can you can ask Every taxi driver it will tell you it's tired. It's tiring But then they have one area in the brain, which is better developed Okay, so and in real life, it would mean if you get a taxi driver and the normal subject You you you you get them you leave them out in the jungle Probably the taxi driver will more easily find it its way back. They're not the normal one because that's his advantage He can orient better Okay, and in in the bilingual probably it is that the brain is better protected. Okay, I'm not Stupid enough saying he he maybe resolves conflicts better because we don't have anymore so many evidences for younger ages maybe as an Someone elderly yes But the real life really uh outcome is then Your brain is better adapted to to deal with conflicts But you have to go through a stage in which everything is difficult questions From someone who hasn't made any questions. Do you want me to ask you questions? No, you're laughing you no question. Everything is clear Yes That's once here. Yes. These are the converters and non converters. Okay And they have the same Mile cognitive impairment. Okay to the to the same degree But if you have the pet pattern of those subjects, you're almost sure But there's there's no hundred percent certainty in medicine. Okay, but you're almost quite sure that they will probably develop one day into full blown Alzheimer dementia Yes Yes But even even not in real life. I mean in general Yeah There are differences between Right It's an excellent question actually For me the milliseconds probably doesn't make they don't make any difference in my real life But as we will see later if I have a delay of dementia on set of 4.5 years That doesn't make only a difference in my real life, but also of your government Yes I'm no well Yes, yes, it depends what you mean with behavior. It's it's a yeah Yes No, okay. It's it's it's complicated. Okay, uh, you've seen it from one of my of my of my slides the The most dangerous thing in this field is always to To presume that there's a one-to-one relationship between behavior and brain It simply is not like that There's no one-to-one relationship between brain and behavior Not all differences in behavior are reflected by differences in brain and the other way around And we should always keep this in mind I think the the effect of speaking to languages is is bigger Is higher in the brain. They're not on behavior Of what? Well, maybe you don't care, but I think your loved ones would care about it You know, of course, I know I know what you mean, of course, but uh Behavior somewhere comes from the brain even there's no one-to-one relationship But uh, my point is when I say I don't care about The small behavioral differences because for me by then in younger ages and I was talking about children and young adults It doesn't change my life if there are milliseconds of differences between Two groups, but for aging subjects it is Important even behavioral differences. And this is what I'm actually talking about so But since 80 percent or even 90 percent of that literature and science is really on adults and children okay, my point is uh I won't lose any more my time and effort in studying starting uh with those paradigms differences in bilinguals and monolinguals Something I haven't told you but I mentioned now it will be even useless today in my opinion. Look how our life Our lives have changed Even if you compare to 10 20 years ago We all now use Phones video games and whatever and the effect of the use Of multitasking or phones is as potent as bilingualism is So how can we now compare? It's it's really the strongest confounding factor we have in this field all these other activities we do and it may be As potent as bilingualism as languages is or even more potent, there are some nice studies showing that uh if if children play four or five hours video gaming That's the powerful boost of their executive functions I'm not telling now we should tell our children to play four or five hours video games But but just to see that this is another Uh Exponential activity that has a powerful impact on executive functions If it harms or not we will see in in the future But my fact this language is okay It's difficult to to find the subtle differences behaviorally in younger populations But it may be important for for the aging population Is this clear or You're still I wouldn't I wouldn't give you a grant 100,000 euros studying bilingualism or language are faster. Why would you do this? Now Oh, it's a nice it's a nice discussion. I hope it would end up like this. But why would you do this? I don't know why I asked him you know, it's a question also to the audience.  Well, if you're only studying two comments one on whether we care or not In on the educational side of what I do on why where I worry about the discussion about The so-called bilingual advantages that and maybe this is a north american phenomenon, maybe not so european that you have parents who are thinking about sending their children to a bilingual program or not And they're often much more concerned about the cognitive advantages the child will get That the ability to communicate in two languages. I sort of say to parents I don't think you should worry about these cognitive advantages What your child is really going to get out of this experience? We started with this the whole lesson started with this comment from someone here in the front row that uh When I asked what's what are the advantages and thanks god That person hasn't said cognitive advantage. I said it's it's useful being able to speak into into languages I can communicate with much more Different societies are my working chances opportunities. They increase because I speak more more languages And whenever we we actually Talk to parents as as you do a lot. We actually are much more focused on that and we also know that Cognitively not talking about language by cognitive functions. It doesn't give you any disadvantage being being bilingual So that's the most the most important thing but also by looking at these Advantages sometimes small millisecond differences in bilingual brains versus small bilingual brains These are really if you want to theory how the brain works or how languages learn We have to look at all languages And the experiences and I think it's a discrepancy Behavior and the brain is really interesting because often it shows you how flexible the brain is because if you use alternative systems Or strategies to achieve the same thing So bilinguals this notion of bilinguals being better or worse, which is the way we use that With now being reformulated is how is the model like your brain work? How is the lining your brain? So we're getting much more sophisticated in the way we think about these issues It's not just saying it different At better or worse, and there's where you use small differences that you can be able to think Someone else on the valuable advantage. Yes Yeah, I was I was thinking that it's very important to remember that like any result of the study has some kind of implications like in terms of education and of course It is not the case that the results of research is not very well translated into what actually goes later into the public and What results in various policies? um Well, quite recently I heard a talk by Gigi Luk who was talking about maybe it doesn't make sense to talk in terms of like Advantage and disadvantage because if we Talk about advantages and disadvantages and compare bilinguals to normal bilinguals There is always one group that is worse than the others, right? So why why should we do that? But as I understand it and the whole discussion of bilingual Advantage It began because like in the beginning of the 20th century there was this widespread belief that bilinguals actually do have lower IQ And you know and are slower to learn and so on and so forth And I think that this belief still holds value in some communities like even even today There are schools where teachers prohibited children to talk among themselves in their minority language There are parents who really try to make the decision Okay, if we leave in the us and our home languages polish should we care about the polish language or whatever minority language Or maybe the child will not need it anyway, and it's important to focus on the majority language and so on and so forth. So so so I guess What's the discussion about The advantage it brings us is just to Make people aware that, you know, it is not worse to be bilingual Yeah, I could have said it better perfect No, it's it's true. I mean But I think thanks god are less and less people who still have those old thoughts because I I see how it's changing I don't know about North America, as you say, but in Europe we have much more bilingual schools bilingual education So people are becoming aware, but as you say you probably still find people who are against it because They still insist of concepts from really a hundred years ago that it would lead to actually a cognitive impairment Albert People believe what? Of course You know Showing that people are better than others But they should be Showing that but it was not more confused In the dawn, we are just believing in things that are weird They didn't even vote for Trump But that's not our business We're scientists, right? We care about what is good or bad for society itself We care about The data science Don't believe that it's confusing I don't believe it That's it. I don't get what you're saying Are you really confused? Sorry Okay, so like I I would answer to you Two points like first of all, um Maybe I might have Word of it Not in a very good way. I do not Believe that we should talk just as Gigi looks at I don't want Like the researchers to say, okay, these are better. These are worse I agree with what Gigi looked at. It doesn't make sense to talk of, you know And comparing which is better than the other When talking about the educational implications or let's say if we if we try to translate the research to you know like popular I don't know policies and so on and so forth And because you know what the data Says like we can understand it as researchers, but then I think it is also our job to translate it to the general public and and the second thing is that The widespread believer I was talking about from the beginning of the 20th century Turned out to not to be right. I mean I mean the idea that my name was a lower IQs came from the From their own methodology It came from the fact that People were tested in the language that they did not really know It is close That's it Yeah, that's it, but now there are a lot of people who Do grow up in a valuable setting They have their home language, which might be a minority language They have been a you know community who speaks another language And of course those people are looking for answers like what what they should do Right as researchers and as researchers like having some results like also asking questions and looking for the answers Well, I believe that it is also like our task to translate the results of their research Yeah This side, what do you think about all this? You what's your opinion? No behind you Yes So you were sleeping all the time Well, you can tell us Well, what well, you cannot really measure it 100% okay, you use questionnaires and You you ask the subjects for instance About the daily activities how much time they spend in one language how much time they use the other language And you can do it also retrospective, but it's difficult to have a real really objective measurement of Of exposure. It's not like proficiency where you have tests that you can do Of course. Yes. Yes And another difficulty is to find objective measures of how often you switch languages because you have seen it It has an impact on the whole language control Areas, but it's it's really difficult to to have an objective measurement of Of how often the subject switches, okay You know, you cannot just tell someone okay come to lab I make an interview with you and I see how often you switch because Or even a subject comes and lab he his brain is influenced to use what language you you speak with him, okay There's something that has to be observed some More empirically probably or in some more natural Setting Yes, and no and and we have we have to study those variations and We can study them and we can even Correlate those variations to variations of the brain for instance 200 millisecond difference It makes sense. So wouldn't be wouldn't be safe to say that the behavioral methods in milliseconds Can be used for some measures and Brains can Can be used for other measures and the best solution is to use both if you have resources Money and time or Say that Maybe it was misunderstood, but I never said that behavior is not important to study As you as you see in all our experiments, we always correlate behavior later It is it is important to have behavior behavior later brain data alone. They tell you nothing But you have to have behavior later To correlate to your brain because you want to make some statements on behavior from from your brain data my point was much more Really focused on on all this executive Functioning differences between by limits of modeling with differences milliseconds that I find it just wasted money Doing a lot of experiments on this unless as Correctly Albert says someone should do experiments showing that by limits are worse on General intelligence or cognitive functions. That would be something nice to study, but Maybe someone has tried but there was no real outcome Exactly Exactly, but I understand I mean In in other cognitive domains milliseconds can make differences. I know yes, so I'm not really don't get it as a message I'm not against behavior later I'm absolutely in favor because we do it too and I like to correlate them to to brain Always keeping in mind that There is no one-to-one relationship between brain data and behavior later Okay Not not always they really fit into it Because as Fred actually said the brain may use different strategies for coping with the same behavior Okay And you see it in especially in in our aging Population take as an example what I told you before about you have two subjects both have Alzheimer dementia same age same performance or cognitive testing when one has a lot of Brain atrophy hypermetallism and the other one not so There wouldn't be any one-to-one Relationship between brain and behavior because the behavior is the same but one is really not Working in the same way in this brain like the other it means the brain uses different strategies. It compensates for the loss Okay, there's just as a simple example that really there is no one-to-one Relationship because the brain has Can use other strategies For dealing with the same problem behavioral problem And then that makes us all different Yes, no, it's this is an excellent Question, but with the methods we use you difficult It's very difficult to detect this because that goes really more in the molecular basis of of behavior But then you go much more into the field of psychiatry really the molecular basis because of of course surely All of all sorts and behaviors if they change something changes also at the molecular basis but that really goes Far away from from my topic here really but One can study then there are studies studies about this But it's more not because whatever i'm doing here is it's more the macro anatomical Field you really have to go into micro anatomical stuff to To investigate that everything fine So i go on Protective factors we mentioned them before, okay For building up the cognitive sort of like education occupation cognitive physical and social activities how they may influence Brain reserve Look at this experiment done many years ago. It was the first types of pet scanning Okay, this is this the thing i just mentioned Before you have Three different patients here for instance, okay, they all have different levels of education High education, okay above average A graduate so it's also higher education and this is a low education And and in blue you see the hyper metabolism in the brain, okay, and The subject with the highest education has more brain damage actually, okay But the performance is is the same you see the example i made before You you have two subjects. They're the same age both have ultimate dementia And here in this case the mini mental state examination, which is a brief cognitive battery Of evaluating global cognitive function highly used in dementia a Is actually higher for This subject with 15 years of education as compared to the subject was five years of education But if you see of the pattern of of brain Hey, you see better here. It's all hyper metabolism. It's much higher in this subject i.e. it stands for he is compensating better, okay And this is even more important because 23 the score of 23 is actually The cut off level below it. It's called already dementia Above it from tenders we above it's just only mild cognitive impairment And from 27 onwards it's normal performance. Okay, so despite having Much more brain atrophy and hyper metabolism. This subject has still almost Non-dementia like cognitive profile Okay, compared to to this subject with only little brain atrophy okay It minimizes just one example, but We have so many different cognitive Batteries it takes almost two hours to investigate them and they all go in the same direction it's just for for Easiness of Communication we always use the mini mental just for saying there are also others like at the mocha and others But they all go in the same direction Because the issue here is just to show that Education you can make this difference the difference in education You can compensate better. So it's it's a cognitive reserve This was a very nice study than several years ago Called as use or use it or lose it Okay, in which the the authors studied Okay Aging populations who frequently played board games such as chess checkers by gammon and so on okay and compared them to To match groups of elderly people who who did not and and as you see even in this in this case The proportion surviving three of dementia is higher. Okay. So this is also some sort of cognitive Activity okay intellectual activity that may delay the onset of dementia or even Slower the progression of dementia one one has a dementia, you know, it's almost common sense when when we have Elderly patients coming in to the amuletary and the family asked for advice. What can we do? There's something common sense. You always tell them all play play games make a Chess or other Board games of Sudoku and all these things because it in some way it stimulates your brain Okay, and there's no plenty of data showing that it really delays the the progression Now we come back to the fact of bilingualism. Okay, you have seen this This this image before this was a paper of 2005 by ballastock and her canadian Colleagues just showing that by that time there was always A bilingual advantage even for younger groups. Okay, but the point of this of this graph is that if there is a Difference between by the incident the more nervous this becomes even bigger with aging Okay, as you see here, maybe these are some 30 40 milliseconds, but here it's more than 200 300 milliseconds Okay, so so maybe the real effect The real cognitive real behavior. Okay, so you don't kill me the behavioral effect of by the investment is is evident Only in the aging populations As I mentioned before magilla valium made this beautiful statement probably because They are less exposed to other confounding factors i.e other Stimulating activities on cognition Let's read some facts together About dementia the first paper that came out This field was still by ballastock and her colleagues in which They shown in a retrospective study that bilinguals developed dementia was a 4.5 year Later than monolinguals, okay And that did a huge impact. It was all around all mass media and all the things and it was confirmed in Subsequent studies still from the same toronto group Who confirmed the same findings the same age delay a 4.5 years in a different group of dementia patients Caviar and colleagues published in 2008 the paper in which they made this beautiful association In which the number of languages spoken was associated to increase cognitive functioning in healthy elderly individuals i.e if you speak Five or six languages. It is more powerful than if you speak two languages Okay Why two languages would be more powerful than speaking one language However, then some Christmasmen arose in this field Saying that many studies maybe did not take into account different ethnic backgrounds Okay, there's always differences between for instance immigrants and the local population Other factors were not often taken into consideration like education lifestyles and diet and so on Howard churchoff Mentioned that It's also very difficult in many cases in many studies even the one from toronto to Separate the effects of bilingualism from the effects of immigration And guanan and colleagues in san diego Found that this Advantage a little advantage in the elderly population Was found only in low education by language, but not in high education by language So in other words education, maybe Must be affected that we have to take into account when we compare two different groups like more than with some bilinguals Zahot known colleagues published a paper in 2014 in new york city in which They reported bilingualism Has no effect Okay on cockney's decline or dementia in new york city, okay I was making this funny joke. I have to mention that Zahot is also the only one who published a paper in new york city Saying that education has no effect on Yeah, it's funny. Maybe, you know, we had a nice discussion about this Maybe in new york city, you will never get effects because they just live in new york city I don't I don't know but but even I know from Lorraine obler and even virgin valent who did some studies Between comparison between my limits among limits and whatever age range. They don't find differences in new york city maybe it's already such a city enriching that It's enough to live there to have all the best effects in the world But with this paper from Zahot, I mean, it's of course possible that they're always studies that don't report No effects and it's good that we have them because it makes us to just look deeper into the whole part But then we've got this huge study done in india by alady and tomas back and colleagues Which was done in over 600 subjects And the authors observed that by linguids and mono-linguids from the same autonomous population were studied Hence eliminating the confounding factor of immigration The funniest thing and the interesting thing is that they report the same age span of delay 4.5 years and a totally different part of the world So this is really interesting And this effect was not only found for Alzheimer's disease, but also for other types of dementia like frontotemporal dementia and also vascular dementia And the authors were also able to do a separate analysis on a subgroup of illiterates and The effect was even larger six years But this doesn't go far away from the study of golan who says the effects are more powerful and low education by linguids Okay, and as they report six years in the meantime, they also some other studies Like a woman's published a study in which she also report I don't remember if it wasn't belgium or laxanburg The same what? belgium, okay The same effect of 4.5 years of delay Okay, and as we will see later We have also our own study on Alzheimer's dementia and we found also an effect of five years. So it's amazing I mean Just consider five years delay of dementia What this means I told you before The best drug we have on the market eventually may delay Or slow down the the progression of dementia for six months Four five years That's billions that we would save if everyone would be bilingual. Okay, but as I will show you also later It is not enough To be simply bilingual. Okay This I will end this whole lesson with this message that it's not enough to be bilingual We must have certain You must meet certain conditions to have those those effects The first study actually investigating aging brains in bilinguals was still done by the toronto group With a DTI study Diffusion Tanger imaging they study White matter and the authors report that bilinguals have increased aging bilinguals healthy Have increased white matter densities in the frontal lobes especially Remember the frontal lobe goes into atrophy, but it is the area that compensates for all for all loss Just a brain showing frontal lobe atrophy. Okay, and My limits probably have some areas better connected. I will show you now some experiments We have done in mostly in hong kong. Okay, so you see hong kong is a beautiful city You have good food Good lifestyle. It's very rich. Maybe after kids was that after six months it becomes boring But it after okay three years, okay But it's The best place to find bilinguals Okay, and you have even different types of bilinguals. Okay, the classical Hong Kong would be Cantonese born Chinese subjects who speaks perfectly english from kindergarten age Okay, and then you have a more recent type of bilingualism which Comes from mainland china Mostly all people immigrating to hong kong. Many of them are first language mandarin speakers who learned Cantonese in hong kong okay So you might find a lot of people in this in this study. We had 36 Chinese English valuable subjects, okay You will later see that we have also some Mandarin Cantonese Subjects it's a study on On aging We assessed all the things you see here the social economical status that did the picture naming task in order to investigate proficiency Likewise a translation task. We had also a self-reported questionnaire for language background All of them were matched or studied for education social economical status as said and mini mental And they all performed the flanker task all of them. Okay The first thing we did with our cohort of this bilinguals Was to study simply the effect of age On brain structure Okay, so I'm not yet correlating the flanker and other things, but Just interested Where do I find an aging effect in the brain?  Okay, this is this is how you can control Individual factors, okay, because not all brains are the same size Okay, so you can correct it with uh, but if you calculate the total intercranial volume We found interestingly this Area in the left temporal pole Okay, where our subjects show an effect of aging Okay This area the left temporal pole or temporal poles in general have been for a long time a mystery in cognitive neuroscience Okay, no one really knew what this area is Over for okay, the only Notion we have comes from some psychosurgical experiments in the 30s and 40s There was once a feat in medicine called psychosurgery. Okay, you have some behavioral Alteration, okay, like schizophrenia, whatever then the cut pieces of your brain. Okay, it didn't work out Okay, thanks god. No one is doing it anymore Except if you have those untreatable epilepsy then still the surgeon could could do it Okay, and many of those patients who got this kind of surgery cutting this area would become Probably more psychopaths. Okay, it's it's linked to our behavior But in recent years, uh, thanks to neuroimaging especially, uh, we have much more insights about this area. Okay We now know that we have in our brain two different pathways for language processing It's uh very similar to what happens for visual processing where you have a what and where pathway Now we have the same for for language. We have a docile pathway and we have a ventral pathway. Okay, the docile Pathway would be the where pathway. Okay, it's more important for Grammar and phonology in language and then you have this Ventral pathway, which is the what pathway so it's more about semantics and lexical semantics So we know now that this specific area here Okay is involved in lexical semantics Okay, and we know also that a part of the frontal lobes It is the first one of the first areas that goes into physiological atrophy Okay, it means that during healthy aging This area just shrinks. Okay, you can see it here. This is someone with no disease at all. Okay, but this is the temporal pole It's like it's really uh like a point. Okay, it's not anymore around like it should be And if you now put this two notions together, yes, it's involved in lexical semantics and it's the first area Uh to go into atrophy Just keep in mind. What's the first symptom cognitive symptom of our grandparents of our parents or grandparents What memory is to walk What Again, no Perfect. It's worth finding problems. Okay so And this probably because this area does not work any more Preferably. Okay, so they struggled usually finding uh words. Okay, not only in the lab on picture naming, but also in in real life so In the second step, we just took Whatever we had except a flanker Like our social demographic More variables and we try to correlate it to this area to see if one of those factors may be protective Okay, of course we found there an aging effect. We're interested to see Does one of those variables protect this area against aging? Global cognitive functioning does not years of education does not the sc s social economic status does not Exposure to second language had no effect But naming had Which makes sense because you just told me this area is important for word finding. Okay, but interestingly It was not at a one naming Okay, the effect was driven only by second language naming The better Our subjects were in second language naming The less aging effect ie atrophy they had in this area Okay It means only those subjects Who are highly proficient? The name well the second language Have neural protection And this we will see better in in the subsequent experiments is actually the message It should always keep keep in mind like it is not simple enough to be by label You must have good mastery. You must use probably Your second language to have neural protection. Yes What what do you mean which study? Yes Yeah, I will show you what Because there's something more interesting because When we saw this said wow wonderful It's big make a big impact. So we wrote the paper was sent it but it came back The reviewers said my story you're telling us but in order to do though this you need a monolingual country group You need some regions of interest also Of control okay to compare compare your data. So you have to do everything again And we did it okay, and this is the study I'm mentioning it But the problem was whether you find monolinguals in Hong Kong You don't you don't find them There are monolinguals, but they're usually of a very low Educational level and socio-economical status. Hence we cannot we cannot use them Good thing is Hong Kong has the same scanner model as we have in Milan So I just did something Someone says it's unorthodox, but uh, I think it's not I took a control group from Milan a monolingual control group Okay The scanner is the same so we can we can we can use it Lifestyle is not so much different between Hong Kong Milan even if it's on two different continents Uh, the diet is different. Okay, but There's this discussion what diet is more superior than military diet or a chinese diet against uh I have data on that, but I'm just saying they ask more small differences, but you can still do such a study Okay, so we took the monolinguals from Milan and H match and match also for all other variables and compare them to the bilinguals of hong kong And you see here monolinguals as compared to bilinguals have More areas in which you find aging effects Okay, and the direct comparison between the two groups Resulted in this huge difference in the left temporal pole Right in the sense that bilinguals have less aging effects in this area, okay And we also took some regions of of control And for all regions we found that bilinguals have more F increased ray matter than monolinguals And also the correlation which we did with This naming Okay, the second language naming was still found in the same area Okay, so this study was published you have seen it, but I mean the result is nice, but I was a little bit puzzled How comes just We started 9 30 I was talking about one specific aspect of bilingualism or not And I show you now some data about neural protection, but it's not what I have expected Isn't it No For you grown-ups Questions no I would expect in my first experiment with aging populations to find clear effects in con language control areas This is not a language control area This is an area linked to lexical semantics Okay I didn't expect this I tell you honestly I really was sure I would find something in other areas We find something also in other areas in other experiments, which I will I will show you but this was really unexpected Okay, but then Of course, you have to adapt you have to think why do we find differences specifically in that area You have any suggestions There's greater lexical I think it's that Yes, it's it's this really the story that We suppose there's one semantic system even if there are Many differences, but that semantic system is linked to two different lexicals and And by handling them in some way accessing them may provide you this This difference, okay, so this goes really far away from language control, but it's just the fact that you have to lexical systems increases gray matter in that specific area and provides you with a neural protection, okay Uh, I went around with this with this data for three years All over the world. I do my presentations and I get always the same comment What comment will always get the same criticism It's even not so complicated yet, but a much more Uh, I'll say simple comment about this I always get the criticism about this Even it's complicated. No Everyone has told me yeah, you know data are nice, but it's not it's not nice comparing Hong Kong to Milan You know, yes, I mean, I mean, okay So I heard this story about two years Whatever then we decided to to run the same experiment with other subjects from south steel old and As you see here It's here because after all we find the same effects also for south steel for european aging bilinguals, okay We have it's not 100% the same, but we have similar effects in the same brain area Like bilinguals have less aging effects in the temporal poles as compared to more so I can really calm down all criticism criticism that we did experiments and so so different subjects from different ethnicities and languages whatever and There are some other experiments coming out from different labs who report similar findings even LNB allysauce group in canada That it was the 15th experiment in which the measured white matter and grey matter densities in a group of aging bilinguals and They also find a strong effect in the left temporal pole, okay, which correlates with aging, okay Only for monolinguals. There's no correlation with age I mean as in chronological age for bilinguals on the other hand the state is really interesting It increases with age Okay, so one hypothesis may be that maybe the years of exposure of a bilingual, okay Still stimulates that area to To You're gonna say you're gonna use the word grow, but to still make synapses This I haven't mentioned but I have to tell you we don't know yet Up to date what increase in grey matter exactly means at the cellular level because you all should know that after After a certain age like four or five six years. It's impossible to increase the number of neurons Okay, it will always remain the same. It will actually decrease So grey matter increase cannot mean increase of neurons It probably means increase of synapses between neurons or increase of supporting cells Okay, not all cells in the gramator are neurons a lot of cells are Supporting cells who have to bring the energy to to neurons and who have to help in the metabolism of neurons. Okay, but we don't know yet exactly what the meaning is And the authors of this paper actually made this beautiful graph of gray matter Torjection in aging populations There's also a study by steiner in the younger subjects and they see how how By the investment really protects that area from from physiological loss of cells Finally, okay at the same time we were doing another experiment at this time not in hong kong, but in beijing with aging by model bilinguals okay It's a different type of bilingualism But if you find the same effects also in this type of bilingualism, you can really make a universal state