Subcortical plasticity and enhanced neural synchrony in multilingual adults

Abstract Whereas growing evidence supports the advantages of bilingualism for brain structure and function, no study has shown multilingual-related neuroplasticity in response to speech stimuli at subcortical level. To investigate impact multilingualism on auditory processing, evoked (speech-ABR) was recorded 35 young adults. The multilingual group completed language experience proficiency questionnaire (LEAP-Q). results were that participants demonstrated enhanced neural timing including a shorter wave D latency V-A duration, sharper slope compared monolinguals silence. In noise condition, speech-ABR measures degraded most components, significant difference observed between two groups. association total score several responses significant. This shows stronger synchronization multilinguals relative monolinguals, correlated with self-report experience.