Figure 1

Bilingual influence on brain function and structure. Transparent brains showing the left and right hemispheres. Green voxels depict grey matter regions showing high activation during bilingual language switching in a meta-analysis (94). Red-yellow voxels indicate regions of higher white matter integrity in bilingual older adults relative to monolinguals (111). Together, the functional and structural data indicate that neural correlates of bilingualism are observed in the frontal lobes, generally responsible for higher cognition such as executive functions.