Proactive and Reactive Language Control in the Bilingual Brain

The current experiment investigated bilingual language control within the dual mechanisms framework. In an fMRI investigation of morphosyntactic rule production, the presence or absence of target language cues was manipulated to investigate the neural mechanisms associated with proactive and reactive global language control mechanisms. Patterns of activation across nine regions of interest (ROIs) were investigated in seventeen early Spanish English bilingual speakers. A cue by phase interaction in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and pre-supplementary motor area (Pre-SMA) was observed, suggesting that these regions were more active during cue phases, and less active during execution phases, when target language cues were presented. Individual differences analyses showed that variability in proactive control (informative > non-informative cued trial activation during preparation) in the basal ganglia was correlated with proactive control in the left DLPFC, left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and right precentral ROIs. In contrast, reactive control (non-informative > informative cued activation during execution) in the anterior cingulate was correlated with reactive control in the Pre-SMA and left orbital frontal ROIs. The results suggest that, consistent with the dual mechanisms framework, bilinguals differ in the degree to which they use cues to proactively prepare to use a target language.