2022 Volume 42 Issue 3 Pages 267-271
Multilingual speakers are those who speak more than one language in daily life.
The recovery of aphasia in multilingual speakers is multidimensional and involves several interrelated factors, resulting in different recovery patterns.
The main factors involved in the recovery of aphasia in multilingual speakers are the pre-onset language status : differences in language modalities used before disease onset : differences in size of the lesion site and severity of aphasia after disease onset : linguistic similarity between languages : influence of the language environment, including language therapy, after disease onset: impairment of language switch mechanisms : and differences in the lateralization of language functions.
Especially, the role of language status before disease onset is significant. The greater the linguistic similarity between the two languages, the more likely they are to have overlapping localization of language functions and to recover in parallel.
Hemispheric lateralization of language function has been suggested to involve the right hemisphere in reported cases of crossed aphasia. However, a subsequent meta-analysis showed that early bilingual speakers had bilateral organization of both languages. In late bilingual and monolingual speakers, left hemisphere dominance has been shown in both languages.
