On the afternoon of September 16, Professor Pedro Kepa Paz-Alonso from the Basque Center for Cognition, Brain and Language was invited to the 2nd Academic Forum on Language Acquisition, Cognition and Brain Science, bringing us the lecture entitled "Function Specialization and Plasticity in Monolingual and Bilingual Adult Language Learners". This lecture is the fourth lecture of the forum. It was initiated by Professor Wang Jianqin, Director of Center for the Cognitive Science of Language, Beijing Language and Culture University, and hosted by Dr. Wei Yanjun. The lectures broadcasted via zoom and bilibili, which attracted hundreds of domestic and foreign audiences.
In this lecture, Professor Paz-Alonso gave a systematic and detailed introduction to monolingual and bilingual adult language learners' brain function specialization and neuroplasticity in four sections. First, Professor Paz-Alonso reviewed the neural mechanisms of reading, speech comprehension, and speech production in previous studies, and then discussed in detail the brain region consistency found in his research for reading comprehension and speech comprehension processing ( print-speech convergence), as well as the factors affecting the second language learning of bilinguals and the brain plasticity of adult language learners. In general, the conclusions of the research are as follows: 1) The brain regions activated by the understanding system of different languages have strong consistency, but the results of separate analysis of different systems show that different languages have different functional calculations; 2 ) The second language orthography deeply regulates the dynamic changes of the ventral and dorsal network functions of the late bilinguals, and compared with the late bilinguals, the early bilinguals have stronger bilateral activation of the second language and show stronger brains Inter-hemispheric connectivity; 3) Compared with speech output, the language comprehension system showed more plastic changes caused by language learning after the subjects became adults. Professor Paz-Alonso’s lectures are rich, comprehensive and easy to understand. In particular, he introduced many of his unpublished latest research results, which provided us with a lot of experience and inspiration for us to study the reading/speech comprehension and speech production of Chinese as a second language.
