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Review
. 2014 Dec 3:5:1401.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01401. eCollection 2014.

Cognitive control, cognitive reserve, and memory in the aging bilingual brain

Angela Grant  1 , Nancy A Dennis  1 , Ping Li  1
Affiliations
Review

Cognitive control, cognitive reserve, and memory in the aging bilingual brain

Angela Grant et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

In recent years bilingualism has been linked to both advantages in executive control and positive impacts on aging. Such positive cognitive effects of bilingualism have been attributed to the increased need for language control during bilingual processing and increased cognitive reserve, respectively. However, a mechanistic explanation of how bilingual experience contributes to cognitive reserve is still lacking. The current paper proposes a new focus on bilingual memory as an avenue to explore the relationship between executive control and cognitive reserve. We argue that this focus will enhance our understanding of the functional and structural neural mechanisms underlying bilingualism-induced cognitive effects. With this perspective we discuss and integrate recent cognitive and neuroimaging work on bilingual advantage, and suggest an account that links cognitive control, cognitive reserve, and brain reserve in bilingual aging and memory.

Keywords: aging; bilingualism; brain reserve; cognitive reserve; memory; neuroimaging.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Posterior-to-anterior shift in aging (PASA) predicts that with age comes a shift, such that older participants show greater activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and less activity in the left visual cortex during memory tasks, while younger adults show the reverse pattern.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
An illustration of the monolingual vs. bilingual aging brain. In monolinguals, aging is associated with an increased reliance on the frontal regions, according to the PASA hypothesis. In bilinguals, the aging brain shows preservation of the posterior regions (including temporal and parietal cortex), as well as increased connectivity between frontal and posterior areas, leading to cognitive reserve.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
The conditional routing model, adapted from Stocco et al. (2014). In this figure, Side 1 represents a prototypical situation, where prefrontal cortex (PFC) is receiving multiple concurrent signals. In this situation, the strongest concurrent signal (from region B) is most likely to affect the PFC (hence the figure shows the impact of connection B in the prefrontal cortex). Side 2 exemplifies the role of the basal ganglia, which serves as a mechanism to modify cortical pathways. In this case, the basal ganglia strengthen the signal particularly from area C (hence the figure features the impact of connection C).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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