A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique is the first to be addressed here. An MRI is a procedure in which a magnetic field of great strength surrounds a portion of the body. Radio waves are transmitted through it, resulting in high-resolution topographic images of the tissue being imaged. During a given activity, such as language use, functional MRI analyzes changes in the metabolic activity (including blood flow and oxygenation) of specific brain areas.
In cases when localization of function within the brain is crucial, a functional MRI brain scan in New Jersey is the technique of choice. It can discriminate between small regions of the brain that are less than a millimeter apart in size. Compared to event-related potentials (ERP), which are discussed below, functional MRI has a lower temporal resolution, limiting the variety of questions that can be posed about the time course of information retrieval and processing. Every second, a new image of the brain and the changes that are occurring in it can be produced using functional MRI.
In a famous study, the findings revealed an anatomical difference between participants who became bilingual at a young age and those who became bilingual at a later period in one of the two brain regions traditionally connected with language between the two groups of subjects. The activity of the same region of Wernicke’s area was demonstrated in both languages during a quiet recitation task by both groups. On the other hand, late bilinguals showed activation of various neighboring portions of Broca’s area depending on which of their two languages they were speaking at the time. Early bilinguals did not demonstrate this spatial divide
The authors suggest that Broca’s region, which is involved in the production and control of speech, may represent the speech qualities of both languages in an early bilingual in a mixed manner. A late bilingual patient who is highly fluent may, on the other hand, have a fixed and unchangeable representation of L1 in Broca’s region, resulting in the speech information for the second language being represented in a different anatomical position.
There are several possible explanations for this occurrence. For example, the well-known critical period effect may have physical elements that are not well understood: Possibly, a piece of Broca’s region has become informationally frozen at a specific developmental stage specified by age. Alternatively, the manner of learning for late bilingual-explicit instruction in a formal setting influences how speech information may be structurally recorded in the child’s brain. This may be because Wernicke’s region is connected with more abstract language features such as planning and semantic organization and overall comprehension and may not be vulnerable to these influencing factors.
