Volume 15 - 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2021.744489 we used the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) approach to address the effects of linguistic distance between first (L1) and second (L2) languages on language-related brain activations we investigated how L2-related networks may change in response to linguistic distance from L1 we examined L2 brain activations in two groups of participants with English as L2 and either (i) a European language (European group n = 13 studies) or (ii) Chinese (Chinese group We further explored the modulatory effect of age of appropriation (AoA) and proficiency of L2 irrespective of L1-L2 distance—and to an extent—irrespective of L2 proficiency L2 recruits brain areas supporting higher-order cognitive functions (e.g. although with group-specific differences (e.g. the insula region in the European group and the frontal cortex in the Chinese group) The Chinese group also selectively activated the parietal lobe but this did not occur in the subgroup with high L2 proficiency These preliminary results highlight the relevance of linguistic distance and call for future research to generalize findings to other language pairs and shed further light on the interaction between linguistic distance Languages differ structurally to a certain degree and are thus characterized by different degrees of linguistic distance It is not easy to determine such distance as languages may be similar in some respects and differ in other respects Chinese and English are similar in some aspects of syntax as both have a subject-verb-object order but they markedly differ in writing and phonology indicating languages that are hardest and easiest to learn by native English speakers Linguistic distance may be another potentially important aspect contributing to the different L1 vs. L2 brain representations. Several crosslinguistic studies compared the functional networks associated with processing Chinese or Japanese vs. English showing that differences, for instance in phonology or writing, translate into the recruitment of different brain circuits (Bolger et al., 2005; Tan et al., 2005) Studies focused on bilinguals enable to understand how the bilingual brain deals with different processing demands associated with each language this factor has not been systematically studied yet in which quantification of the linguistic distance between the languages spoken by tested bilinguals is not normally assessed Although this quantification is more a matter of linguistics than neuroscience a few interesting results can be found in neuroimaging studies too For instance, Jeong et al. (2007a) investigated the functional brain networks associated with each language in native Korean trilinguals with English as L2 and Japanese as a third known language (L3) Both these languages were learned late (mean AoA 12.3 and 20.6 All three languages belong to different language families although Korean is more similar to Japanese than English (e.g. they have similar syntactic structures and are left-branching The results showed comparable functional activation during auditory sentence comprehension between Korean (L1) and Japanese (L3) whereas English (L2) determined additional activations in both cortical (e.g. pars opercularis of left inferior frontal gyrus and right superior temporal cortex) and subcortical (i.e. This study clearly shows that the brain functional networks associated with each language are also shaped by structural differences between languages A recent meta-analysis addressed the role that the writing system has on L2 brain representation (Liu and Cao, 2016) when L2 is orthographically shallower (i.e. the primary sensorimotor cortex and phonological processing areas are primarily activated reflecting regularity in grapheme-phoneme conversion higher-order frontal regions are recruited to meet additional cognitive demands These findings suggest that bilinguals may rely on different processes when using L2; these processes can be the same as depending on how much the latter successfully meet L2 demands Considering that an increasing percentage of the population worldwide masters even structurally distant languages this study aimed to investigate how L1-L2 linguistic distance may have an effect on L2 brain representation We carried out a quantitative meta-analysis to investigate the role of this factor although the linguistic distance was not directly assessed or quantified in the studies we selected English appeared to be structurally much closer to the selected Indo-European languages (with a score of 2.25–2.50) than to Chinese (with a score of 1.00) we aimed to inspect whether linguistic distance as derived from this index can actually translate into differential English-L2 functional activations Second, we controlled for the effect of L2 AoA and proficiency, given that both these factors were identified by prior meta-analyses as fundamental influencers of the L2 language network in healthy bilinguals (Sebastian et al., 2012; Liu and Cao, 2016; Cargnelutti et al., 2019; Sulpizio et al., 2020) and bilinguals with aphasia (Kuzmina et al., 2019) given that late AoA and low proficiency are likely to pose greater L2 demands and therefore translate into additional functional activations we investigated whether these factors could further modulate the effect of linguistic distance on L2 brain representation We provided an almost exploratory description because only a few studies to date have explored these specific bilingual patterns we believed that investigating how L2-related network changes in response to L1-L2 linguistic distance are a relevant topic of growing interest we also aimed to prompt further research in the field using different language pairs and a better conceptualization of the linguistic distance concept we excluded findings related to a priori selected ROIs and chose to include only those from whole-brain analyses We also excluded studies assessing language performance after either a learning/training period or some kind of manipulation in the degree of exposure to a given language Schematic representation of the paper search and selection processes This first selection resulted in 108 potentially candidate papers which were then accurately read to possibly exclude papers due to: (i) absent or incomplete (not full 3D) coordinates no single coordinate corresponding to the peak activation in a given functional cluster) coordinates reported only for a single subject (n = 2); (ii) coordinates from a priori selected ROIs (n = 3); (iii) analyses with contrasts not being informative (e.g. they did not differentiate between different languages or between bilinguals and monolinguals) or that were too specific or related to a very low-level of linguistic processing such as passive viewing of single letters (n = 3); (iv) assessment after language training (n = 1) List of all the studies included in the meta-analysis The analyses were carried out using the GingerALE software (brainmap.org), relying on a coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation (ALE) algorithm, looking for consistency in functional coordinates across reported contrasts (Turkeltaub et al., 2012; Eickhoff et al., 2009; Laird et al., 2009a,b) This algorithm is based on a random-effect approach that accounts for spatial uncertainty by treating the reported foci as centers for 3D Gaussian probability distributions The provided probability distribution maps which were weighted on the number of subjects described the probability for a given focus to be within a given voxel we reported an exploratory analysis on lexical semantics which was the most frequently represented domain After carrying out the analysis on the whole groups of bilinguals—which we expected to provide the most general and robust functional activations irrespective of influencers – we identified two groups of early and late bilinguals following the most commonly adopted AoA cutoff (i.e. L2 appropriation either before or after the age of 6 years) We found that studies including early bilinguals (AoA < 6) were limited in number we restricted the analyses to late bilinguals We expected the analysis to focus on late bilinguals to better highlight potential differences between the two groups it was interesting to investigate to what extent these differences could be modulated by linguistic distance which provide results consisting in the functional activations associated with a specific condition (i.e. L2 in the European group and L2 in the Chinese group) and (ii) contrast analysis the areas activated in both conditions (i.e. in both the European and the Chinese groups) areas emerging from the direct comparison between the two conditions and being activated in one condition but not in the other (i.e. the functional activations of the European group survived after subtracting activations of the Chinese group and vice versa) We transferred the coordinates to Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) standard space. Coordinates in Talairach and Tournoux (1988) space were converted to the MNI space by icbm_spm2tal transform before running the analyses. Anatomical localization and labeling of resultant clusters of activation were performed using the SPM Anatomy toolbox (Eickhoff et al., 2005) which assigns activations to the most probable cytoarchitectonic area Results of both main effect and contrast analyses are reported in Table 2. Figure 2 shows the results from main effect analyses and Figure 3 from contrast analyses Results of main effect and contrast activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analyses for L2 (i.e. English) in the European and Chinese (whole) groups Rendered functional activations associated with L2 (i.e. Rendered anatomical depiction (in neurological convention) of main effect results associated with L2 in the European and Chinese (whole) groups numbers in blue indicate z-coordinates in MNI space English) specifically for the European and Chinese groups Rendered anatomical depiction (in neurological convention) of contrast analysis results specifically associated with L2 in the European and Chinese (whole) groups L2-associated brain activations emerged in the following regions of the left hemisphere: (i) precentral gyrus (ii) inferior frontal gyrus (including regions associable with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex L2 activation clusters in the group of bilinguals with Chinese as L1 included left-lateralized activations in the (i) superior parietal lobule (SPL) (area hIP3) (ii) inferior frontal gyrus (including regions associable with the DLPFC) and (iv) insula; activations in both hemispheres were observed for the (iv) posterior-medial frontal gyrus The analysis did not provide any suprathreshold clusters This analysis showed a specific activation in the (i) left insula This contrast provided activations in the left (i) inferior parietal lobule (IPL) (area hIP3) and (ii) inferior frontal gyrus (region including the DLPFC) The main effect and contrast analysis results are detailed in Table 3. Figure 4 shows the results from main effect analyses and Figure 5 from contrast analyses Results of main effect and contrast ALE meta-analyses for late-learned L2 and proficient L2 (i.e. English) in the European and Chinese groups Rendered anatomical depiction (in neurological convention) of main effect results associated with late-learned L2 in the European and Chinese groups Rendered group-specific functional activations associated with L2 (i.e. Rendered anatomical depiction (in neurological convention) of contrast analysis results specifically associated with late-learned L2 in the European and Chinese groups L2-associated activation clusters were found in the following regions of the left hemisphere: (i) area not matching with any probability map (located in the hippocampus) and (ii) inferior frontal gyrus (including regions associable with the DLPFC) L2-associated functional activations included left-lateralized activations in the (i) SPL (area 7A) and (ii) precentral gyrus (BA 44) whereas bilateral activation involved the (iii) posterior-medial frontal gyrus Direct group comparison showed activations in the left (i) area not matching with any probability map (located in the hippocampus) and (ii) insula This contrast provided activations in the left (i) SPL (area hIP3) and (ii) inferior frontal gyrus (region including the DLPFC) The main effect and contrast analysis results are detailed in Table 3. Figure 6 shows the results from main effect analyses and Figure 7 from contrast analyses English) main effects in proficient bilinguals Rendered anatomical depiction (in neurological convention) of main effect results associated with proficient L2 in the European and Chinese groups Rendered anatomical depiction (in neurological convention) of contrast analysis results specifically associated with proficient L2 in the European and Chinese groups L2-associated activation clusters were found in the left (i) superior frontal gyrus and (ii) insula L2-associated activations were found in the left (i) inferior frontal gyrus (including regions associable with DLPFC) and (ii) posterior-medial frontal gyrus This comparison showed activations in the left (i) inferior frontal gyrus This comparison provided activations in the left (i) inferior frontal gyrus and (ii) posterior-medial frontal gyrus We also controlled for the effects of L2 AoA and proficiency we could only control for one factor at a time (therefore the group of late bilinguals included both low- and high-proficiency bilinguals and the group of proficient bilinguals included both early and late bilinguals) we observed that the resulting suprathreshold clusters were independent of the other factor (e.g. clusters in the group of late bilinguals were driven by both low- and high-proficiency bilinguals) indicating that AoA and proficiency are likely to shape independently—at least partially—the functional network associated with L2 Findings from the current meta-analysis provide a glimpse of the mechanisms that regulate brain response to L2 with important implications for research and The first analysis included all the selected studies independently of language domain and presentation modality or factors relevant to bilingualism contrast analysis revealed a specific activation of the left insula for the European group and of the inferior frontal gyrus in the territory of the DLPFC for the Chinese group the Chinese group selectively activated a cluster peaking in the intraparietal sulcus and extending to both IPL and SPL it could appear counterintuitive for this region to be specifically recruited in bilinguals knowing closer languages one may hypothesize a greater need for cognitive support when dealing with two languages significantly differing in many respects (e.g. phonology and writing system) due to the need to switch to a different processing modality (e.g. the way graphemes are converted into phonemes) The authors hypothesized that this area was recruited to handle the greater difficulty to coordinate sounds and meaning when L2 is an opaque language irrespective of similarity between known languages bilinguals do tend to strongly rely on cognitive resources when dealing with their L2; however more distant languages could be different and translate into the specific recruitment of different areas This hypothesis is more deeply discussed in the next paragraphs where we illustrated the results obtained when controlling for AoA and proficiency The other specific activation for the Chinese group involved the IPL and SPL.2 The IPL has been mainly (although not uniquely) associated with phonological processing in both Chinese (Wu et al., 2012) and European languages (Hartwigsen et al., 2010) as well as with lexical knowledge in both (Mechelli et al., 2004; Abutalebi et al., 2015) Inspection of the contrasts contributing to this cluster showed that they pertained to different language domains and suggested that this activation was not task-specific Activation of this area can be tentatively explained by drawing on the assimilation-accommodation hypothesis (Perfetti et al., 2007) which postulates that bilinguals may either rely on assimilation (i.e. applying the same procedures developed for L1 to L2 as well) or on accommodation (i.e. “abandoning” the procedures associated with L1 processing to activate those specific for L2) Our results cautiously suggest that Chinese-English bilinguals tend to rely on assimilation when using English Overall, these findings (Liu and Cao, 2016) suggest that the application of long-established mechanisms although not perfectly fitting with the new language demands could be the default strategy used to deal with a new distant language This can more likely occur with late language learning as findings the related paragraph seem to suggest Bilinguals would use these mechanisms as long as these are effective and develop new-language-specific processing mechanisms only when those associated with L1 are inefficient showed the high cognitive demand posed by L2 in this group of bilinguals These preliminary results probably reflect the activation clusters that are more tightly associated with the two conditions (closer vs. more distant language pairs). These activations are also likely to bypass language domain-specificity and represent the brain areas that are generally recruited when performing any task in L2, as they can reflect the cognitive load of managing an additional language (see also the exploratory lexical-semantic analysis in Supplementary Results) Several previous meta-analyses addressed the role of AoA and showed that, overall, late language learning (typically after the age of 6 years) is associated with the recruitment of additional and/or wider brain areas (Liu and Cao, 2016; Cargnelutti et al., 2019) This reflected a higher cognitive effort with respect to early L2 acquisition The impact of AoA can be even more interesting in relation to linguistic distance: one may hypothesize that learning a new structurally distant language might be more demanding when it takes place late when the cognitive mechanisms for L1 are already established we replicated the analysis while controlling for AoA comparison between early and late bilinguals was not possible we can make indirect inferences on the results of late bilinguals Our analyses showed that the European group activated specifically the left insula and hippocampus whereas the Chinese group activated the left DLPFC and SPL The main effect analysis showed that this group also activated the posterior-medial frontal gyrus the two groups did not share any suprathreshold activation clusters Findings for the Chinese group replicate those achieved for the whole group (i.e. suggesting that the specific activations we observed could be more relevant for the Chinese bilinguals having learned English late This is reasonable as greater cognitive control—reflected in the specific activation of the DLPFC—can be necessary to learn L2 when the L1 network is already developed late learners may tend to approach a new language by first applying—and keeping—the same cognitive mechanisms developed to process L1 (assimilation) Activation of the SPL in late bilinguals suggested that this could be the case it was interesting to observe that the left insula was activated for the whole group By inspecting the contrasts contributing to the cluster we observed that these were represented by tasks involving potential conflict decide if letter strings were real words or not) This finding contributes to supporting the previously mentioned hypothesis of insula recruitment to solve potential conflicts its activation could reflect a more efficient learning process where the potential obstacle represented by late AoA is overcome by the development of flexible and associative strategies for new rule application which need to be confirmed by a sufficient number of studies comparing activations associated with the same linguistic tasks in different groups of bilinguals; in this way it would be possible to understand whether hippocampal involvement depends on specific tasks Another crucial aspect concerns the role of proficiency as discussed in previous meta-analyses (Sebastian et al., 2012; Cargnelutti et al., 2019): low proficiency is associated with greater cognitive effort and then with greater activation of areas involved in cognitive control The role of proficiency in relation to linguistic distance could be particularly interesting to explore we could not make a direct comparison between low- and high-proficiency bilinguals owing to the paucity of available data The exploratory analysis carried out on bilinguals who were proficient in their L2 shows—partially unexpectedly—that both the European and Chinese groups activated regions supporting general cognitive functions European bilinguals activated the insula bilaterally although this activation emerged from the main effect analysis only and not from the subtraction analysis (again which is a limitation especially in subtraction analyses) the Chinese group activated specifically the posterior-medial frontal gyrus these findings indicate the role of these regions in supporting even proficient performance The insula was previously observed to activate in balanced bilinguals (i.e., bilinguals with native-like performance in both languages) compared with less proficient bilinguals and also in response to increased task difficulty (Chee et al., 2004). This seems to confirm that this region is recruited to cope with increased cognitive demands (Vigneau et al., 2011) we can also hypothesize that the insula is activated when L2 is mastered very well: a very good mastery of more than one language is a demanding process but the insula could promote an anyway proficient performance it was similar between proficient bilinguals and late bilinguals (note that analysis in the group of late bilinguals included six contrasts referring to high-proficiency bilinguals and 10 to low-proficiency bilinguals suggesting that a similar result could have been affected independently by both AoA and proficiency) we can hypothesize a similar role of the insula in supporting the cognitive effort although for different reasons: (i) the need for proficient bilinguals to perfectly master the two languages in conflict situations (i.e. bilingual environment) and (ii) the need for late bilinguals to overcome obstacles posed by late learning the other activation clusters are likely to work in synergy with the insula to meet the specific demands of the two conditions the lack of SPL activation in this analysis is noteworthy Although a direct comparison between high- and low-proficiency bilinguals was not possible we could speculate that a high level of proficiency can be more easily reached when accommodation—rather than assimilation—processes take place and may also be prompted by accommodation High proficiency is more likely gained throughout proper recruitment of the areas supporting general cognitive functions than by areas specifically associated with a given language This meta-analysis showed recurrent L2-associated activation of regions involved in general higher cognitive functions despite some differences between the two groups of bilinguals These differences probably reflected the different cognitive efforts—therefore recruitment of different cognitive resources—associated with L2 depending on a different degree of linguistic distance with L1 The insula appeared to be mainly activated to solve potential conflicts between structurally closer languages whereas the DLPFC and posterior-medial frontal gyrus (pre-SMA/ACC) when the two languages differ to a greater extent The crucial SPL activation in the Chinese group seems to support a general tendency for reliance on assimilation when processing English but this was not likely to be the case for proficient bilinguals we highlighted the limitations of this study and declared its almost exploratory intent These limitations were not completed due to the study design a small number of studies met the inclusion criteria which was probably the reason why we observed fewer-than-expected functional activations Another limitation concerned the characteristics of the bilingual populations the small number of early Chinese-English bilinguals proficiency was not assessed in an objective way in all the included studies preventing a reliable classification based on this criterion we suggested a more accurate investigation of this variable in future studies possibly evaluating the degree of language exposure as well Another limitation is the lack of a robust definition of linguistic distance and the fact that this was not assessed and quantified in neuroimaging studies on bilinguals these preliminary findings could help us better understand how linguistic distance interacts with other relevant factors such as AoA and proficiency in defining the L2 functional network Our findings may also provide some useful hints from a clinical viewpoint: knowing which brain regions are specifically involved in language processing in these bilinguals may contribute to understanding the impact of potential damage on L1 and L2 performance This study stresses the importance of cognitive control regions and suggests including specific training of these abilities in the rehabilitation of patients developing bilingual aphasia The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because the authors are still implementing it to conduct further meta-analyses Requests to access the datasets should be directed to corresponding author All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version We would like to thank the Province of Udine (Department of Culture) which provided financial support for this study The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2021.744489/full#supplementary-material The neuroprotective effects 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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited in accordance with accepted academic practice distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms *Correspondence: Elisa Cargnelutti, ZWxpc2EuY2FyZ25lbHV0dGlAbGFub3N0cmFmYW1pZ2xpYS5pdA== Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher 94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or goodLearn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish Ukraine rugby league is seeking the participation of Jett Cleary to make his international test debut in the European Championships at the end of the regular season Dan Beardshaw, coach of the Ukraine national team, has been in discussions with the 21-year-old about playing along side his cousin Phoenix Death, son of the former NRL hooker Jason Death, who has in the past pulled on the Ukrainian jersey, the NRL reports younger brother of Penrith Panthers halfback Nathan Cleary currently plays for the New Zealand Warriors Jersey Flegg team Both Jett and Nathan qualify for the Ukraine national team thought their maternal grandmother who both play for Penrith in the SG Ball team also qualify to represent the Ukrainian Tridents as they share the same maternal grandmother Ukraine will look to garner experience from heritage players who in turn give domestic players an opportunity to play alongside professional and semi-professional players from the likes of Australia As a part of the Men’s European Championship Ukraine will compete in Euro C division and will face Italy in Italy on October 18 before taking on Greece also in Italy four days later on October 22 Both Ukrainian games will be played centrally in Italy at Pasian Di Prato – the venue of the 2022 European U19’s Championships to accommodate Ukraine’s involvement who are unable to stage a home game due to their current home war President of the Ukraine Heritage Rugby League Matt Girvan said that Cleary is “quite keen” to make his debut for Ukraine at the European Championships “Our coach Dan Beardshaw is in regular contact with Jett about how he’s going with his footy and the move over to New Zealand.” has played for Ukraine in the European U19s last year,” he said In a 2023 post on X, Nathan Cleary talked about being proud of his Ukrainian heritage and said he also hopes that one day he will be able to “pull on that Ukrainian Jersey for a game.” In the meantime, Ukraine will field an Australian-based heritage team to take on Thailand in an Emerging Nations match at North Sydney Oval on June 8 as part of the Beer, Footy, Food Festival – which features the NSW Cup game between the Bears and Panthers. Beardshaw will select seven players from the game against Thailand to play in to European Championships alongside the Ukrainian domestic squad players in October. © Planet Sport Limited 2025 • All Rights Reserved A MULTI-tiered men’s European Championship (which, from the early 2000s, has been the most frequently contested international tournament) will start in October. Nine nations will contest three competitions – Euro B, Euro C and Euro D – with promotion and relegation involved in each section to determine the 2026 format. Places have been allocated into the initial groups based on the IRL world-ranking positions at the end of 2024. Euro B will comprise Serbia, Netherlands and Malta, Euro C embraces Greece, Italy and Ukraine and Euro D will involve Czechia, Germany and Norway. In both Euro B and D, each nation will stage one home and one away fixture. Euro C, meanwhile, will be played entirely in Italy, at Pasian Di Prato, which was the venue of the 2022 European Under 19 Championship, because of the ongoing war in Ukraine. The winners of Groups C and D will be promoted, whilst the third placed teams in Groups B and A are set to be relegated with the next competition scheduled to be played during October 2026. ERL chair Dean Andrew said: “I’m delighted that European Rugby League are in a position to announce the first phase of this new-look European Championship. “Our members were very clear on their desire for a multi-year competition framework, and we have co-designed the format with them which gives certainty of games over the next two seasons to further extend their international calendars.” It is planned to integrate further nations into the framework from 2027, with the format also taking into account ongoing bilateral match agreements, Rugby League World Cup qualifying and the final in 2026. Volume 13 - 2019 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00154 This article is part of the Research TopicSpeech and Language Editor's Pick 2021View all 10 articles Language representation in the bilingual brain is the result of many factors of which age of appropriation (AoA) and proficiency of the second language (L2) are probably the most studied Many studies indeed compare early and late bilinguals although it is not yet clear what the role of the so-called critical period in L2 appropriation is we carried out coordinate-based meta-analyses to address this issue and to inspect the role of proficiency in addition to that of AoA After the preliminary inspection of the early (also very early) and late bilinguals’ language networks we explored the specific activations associated with each language and compared them within and between the groups Results confirmed that the L2 language brain representation was wider than that associated with L1 although differences were more relevant in the late bilinguals’ group L2 entailed a greater enrollment of the brain areas devoted to the executive functions and this was also observed in proficient bilinguals The early bilinguals displayed many activation clusters as well which also included the areas involved in cognitive control these regions activated even in L1 of both early and late bilingual groups these findings suggest that bilinguals in general are constantly subjected to cognitive effort to monitor and regulate the language use although early AoA and high proficiency are likely to reduce this it appears clear that this may apply to a wide range of individuals the bilinguals assessed in the published studies rarely form consistent and homogeneous groups It follows that a comprehensive and universally accepted picture about the bilingual brain functioning is still lacking and that some questions are yet to be answered the critical AoA seems to fall on adolescence as long as the lexical knowledge mainly depends on the declarative memory capacity A few previous meta-analyses focused on the functional networks associated with each language in the groups of early and late bilinguals. In this respect, Liu and Cao (2016) found that L2 activated several regions (i.e., insula and frontal cortex areas) more than L1 and this especially occurred in the group of late bilinguals. Similarly, Indefrey (2006) who conducted an explorative investigation of the areas that activate in bilinguals with different AoA observed that it was more likely for individuals with late AoA to have an overall greater activation (especially in the left inferior frontal gyrus) The author reported a similar trend for bilinguals with low proficiency/exposure Nevertheless, a recently published systematic review on bilingual aphasia reported on the role of proficiency and use to be secondary to that of AoA (Kuzmina et al., 2019) L2 was more preserved—probably because of its stronger brain representation—in the case it was the best-mastered or mostly used language premorbidly but only in early bilinguals; the effect of proficiency and use were instead limited for late bilinguals although both AoA and proficiency appear to be relevant in shaping the bilingual brain their relative role is not yet clear and the extent to which the proficiency level might scale down the role of AoA has not been yet investigated The principal aim of the present meta-analysis was to shed further light on the impact of AoA on the overall language brain representation and on those specifically associated with each language we tried to derive which brain regions bilinguals activate in a consistent way when performing language tasks in known languages We carried out the analysis separately for the groups of early and late bilinguals we wanted to inspect if some reliable activations could be found in a subgroup of very early bilinguals we investigated the specific activations associated with each language to then compare L1 and L2 within each group (i.e. we aimed to investigate the effect of proficiency we inspected whether the two language networks in early and late bilinguals differed as the result of different proficiency levels With respect to the previous meta-analyses this study: (i) explored more in depth the language networks associated with each language as the result of AoA first and of proficiency second; (ii) investigated the language brain representation resulting from a very early L2 acquisition; and (iii) adopted quite stringent criteria for both paper inclusion and data analysis in order to ascertain the strength of the resultant findings We hypothesized to confirm the results from previous meta-analyses in terms of an overall greater functional activation for the group of the late bilinguals with respect to that of the early bilinguals Regarding the comparison between the two languages we attended greater functional activation for L2 than L1 and expected to find this difference even in the group of early bilinguals we expected the differences between early and late bilinguals and between L2 and L1 to reduce in high vs Figure 1. PRISMA flowchart. Schematic representation of the paper search and selection process. From Moher et al. (2009) we excluded cases of bimodal bilingualism (i.e. with one of the languages being a sign language) and studies assessing the language abilities specific to bilingualism such as translation/interpretation and switching We hence restricted the selection to the studies having addressed the main structural domains (i.e. and morpho-syntax) and we excluded those investigating more specific tasks as the affective/emotional components of language (e.g. role of emotional words) or numbers and mathematics The selection was not limited to specific language families We were confident in including different language tasks from different languages in the same analysis given that the algorithm we used (see afterwards) looks for the areas showing a convergence of activation across different experiments and therefore provides only consistently recurring activations we also excluded studies performing assessments after learning/training processes (e.g. training in a barely mastered language) or after some manipulations to language exposure the participant samples in these studies were normally gender-balanced and quite homogeneous in terms of age (often including young adults) we included only the results from whole-brain analysis excluding those resulting from a priori selected ROIs This first selection resulted in 112 papers which we further scrutinized to obtain the final sample This selection was followed by the exclusion of some additional papers due to: (i) absent or incomplete (not full 3D) coordinates coordinates that were reported only for single subjects coordinates from a priori selected ROIs (not derived from the observed activations) n = 19; (ii) analyses where the contrasts were not informative (e.g. they did not differentiate between different languages or between bilinguals and monolinguals) were too specific or regarded a very low level of linguistic processing (e.g. n = 17; (iii) AoA that was not explicitly reported or did not fit our classification (see afterwards) n = 20; and (iv) other reasons (e.g. tasks assessing a linguistic ability “contaminated” by another aim such as reading finalized to memorization) To define the two groups of early and late bilinguals we adopted the age of 6 years as the AoA cutoff The previously mentioned developmental steps occurring around this age guided our choice further supported by the high number of studies having adopted this same cutoff most of the studies classified bilinguals in early and late following an AoA that was typically represented by people having learnt L2 at school an inspection of the studies we selected led us to include those with participants having an AoA up to 3 years the paucity of the studies on the early bilinguals that acquired L2 after L1 did not allow a specific analysis on this subgroup To meet the specific purposes of our paper excluded the studies where AoA was not explicitly indicated or the reported AoA did not allow to include the participants in the groups we defined on the basis of the selected AoA cutoff (n = 17) in order to reduce additional sources of variability we also excluded studies that investigated language learning in adulthood (n = 3) we observed that many studies reported self-rating assessments or a general evaluation based on the performance in a single task (e.g. Only a small percentage of studies reported a quantitative assessment by structured tests (e.g. These ratings did not allow to reliably classify bilinguals from the proficiency viewpoint the studies in which the participants achieved a high score in a comprehensive language assessment or were defined to have a high proficiency more consistently represented than those with low or intermediate proficiency we limited the analysis to the subsample of high proficient bilinguals and excluded from this subgroup the bilinguals whose proficiency in L2 was greater than in L1 The process of paper selection was preceded by the definition of the objective criteria for study inclusion and exclusion we consulted with one other to define additional criteria based on the issues that emerged in the meanwhile we discussed together about the residual papers that we did not know whether to include or not The final sample consisted of 57 papers (53 fMRI and four PET studies), from which we identified the groups of early bilinguals (74 experiments; 536 foci; 1,048 subjects), very early bilinguals (17 experiments; 91 foci; 227 subjects), and late bilinguals (174 experiments; 1,351 foci; 2,519 subjects), see Supplementary Table S1 for paper list details We carried out the meta-analyses using the coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation (ALE) algorithm developed for neuroimaging data (e.g., Turkeltaub et al., 2002; Eickhoff et al., 2009; Laird et al., 2009a,b) The algorithm looks for convergence across the experiment data by evaluating whether the clustering is higher than that expected under the null distribution of a random spatial association treats the reported foci as centers for 3D Gaussian probability distributions to capture the spatial uncertainty associated with each focus which were weighted on the number of subjects in each study described the probability for a given focus to lay within a given voxel (i) overall language brain representation in early In the first preliminary analysis we investigated the overall (not language-specific) functional brain representation of early and late bilinguals (main effects) We also performed the same analysis on a subgroup of early bilinguals that have acquired the two languages roughly simultaneously (up to the age of 3) and therefore defined as very early bilinguals (ii) L1 and L2 networks and between-language and between-group comparisons We then focused on the functional networks associated with each language We performed the analysis separately for late and early bilinguals excluding the very early bilinguals for whom a distinction between L1 and L2 based on the AoA was not possible We first carried out the main effect analyses; next we performed between-group analyses to compare the networks of L1s and L2s across the two groups and within-group analysis to compare the functional networks associated with L1 and L2 within each group (iii) L1 and L2 networks in proficient bilinguals and between-language and between-group comparisons We replicated the recently mentioned analyses on a subgroup of proficient bilinguals We reported the coordinates in the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) standard space. The coordinates that were standardized to the Talairach and Tournoux (1988) space in the included studies were converted to the MNI space by the icbm_spm2tal transform. To define the precise anatomical localization and label of the resulting areas, we used the SPM Anatomy toolbox (Eickhoff et al., 2005) reported the macro-anatomic localization and The main effect results for each group are reported in Tables 1.1, 1.2 and Figure 2 Main effect results of the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis for the groups of early and very early bilinguals Main effect results of the ALE meta-analysis for the group of the late bilinguals Language networks associated with different age of appropriation (AoA) Rendered templates of the main effect analysis results for (A) early bilinguals Color bars indicate the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) values functional activations emerged in the following regions of the left hemisphere: (i) inferior parietal lobule (including the intraparietal sulcus—area hIP2); (ii) inferior occipital gyrus (i.e. fusiform area); (iii) precentral gyrus; (vi) rolandic operculum; and (v) inferior frontal gyrus (i.e. DLPFC); right-sided activations included (vi) the cerebellum (lobule VIIa and crus I) and bilateral activations; (vii) middle temporal gyri (including the higher auditory cortex—area TE3); (viii) posterior-medial frontal gyri; and (ix) the insulae The very early bilinguals displayed activation in the left hemisphere; lobule VIIa and crus I The late bilinguals’ activation clusters included the following regions of the left hemisphere: (i) the inferior occipital gyrus (fusiform gyrus—area FG4); (ii) superior parietal lobule; (iii) middle temporal gyrus; (iv) precentral gyrus; (v) posterior-medial frontal gyrus; and (vi) inferior frontal gyrus (including BA 44 and DLPFC); activation clusters were also found in right (viii) angular gyrus (more precisely the intraparietal sulcus—area hIP3); and (ix) cerebellum (lobule VI and crus I) and in bilateral (x) middle occipital gyrus (lateral cortex—area hOc4lp); and (xi) insulae The functional brain activations associated with either L1 or L2 are detailed in Tables 2, 3 for L1 and L2, respectively and are all represented in Figure 3 Results of the single ALE meta-analysis on L1 in the two groups of early and late bilinguals Results of the single ALE meta-analysis on L2 in the two groups of early and late bilinguals Language networks associated with L1 and L2 in the two groups of early and late bilinguals Rendered templates of the main effect results for (A) early bilinguals’ L1; (B) late bilinguals’ L1; (C) early bilinguals’ L2; (D) late bilinguals’ L2 all located in the left hemisphere: (i) the inferior temporal gyrus (fusiform gyrus); (ii) middle temporal gyrus (area TE3); (iii) precentral gyrus; (iv) posterior-medial frontal gyrus; and (v) the inferior frontal gyrus (Broca’s area—BA 45—and a region associable with the DLPFC) The L1 activation clusters in late bilinguals included the following regions of the left hemisphere: (i) inferior occipital gyrus (fusiform gyrus—area FG4); (ii) middle temporal gyrus; (iii) precentral gyrus; (iv) posterior-medial frontal gyrus; (v) inferior frontal gyrus (including BA 44 and DLPFC); and (vi) insula; right-sided activations were found in the (vii) superior-medial gyrus; and (viii) cerebellum (lobule VIIa and crus I) The activation clusters associated with early bilinguals’ L2 emerged in the following regions all in the left hemisphere: (i) the superior parietal lobule; (ii) precentral gyrus; (iii) inferior frontal gyrus (region including the DLPFC); and (iv) the posterior-medial frontal gyrus The late bilinguals’ L2 functional activations were located in the following regions of the left hemisphere: (i) superior parietal lobule; (ii) inferior parietal lobule; (iii) superior temporal gyrus,; (iv) posterior-medial frontal gyrus; (v) inferior frontal gyrus (including BA 45 and DLPFC); and (vi) superior-medial gyrus; in the right hemisphere activations emerged in (vii) calcarine gyrus (hOc1 V1); (viii) middle occipital gyrus (lateral cortex-area hOc4lp); (ix) angular gyrus; and (x) cerebellum (lobule VIIa and crus I); bilateral activations were observed in the (xi) insulae The activation clusters resulting from the between-group contrast conditions (i.e., comparison between L1s and L2s across the two groups of early and late bilinguals) are reported in Table 4 and Figure 4 Results of the between-group ALE meta-analysis for L1s and L2s L2 network comparison between the groups of early and late bilinguals Rendered templates and axial projection of the conjunction analysis results for L2: Early bilinguals ∩ Late bilinguals No one area appeared to be consistently activated for L1 in conjunction of the two groups or in one group more than in the other the areas activated in conjunction by the two groups were located in the left (i) inferior frontal gyrus (at the border between BA44 and DLPFC) The direct comparison did not show any clusters activating more consistently in either group over the other Results of the within-group comparison are reported in Table 5 Results of the within-group contrast ALE meta-analysis between L1 and L2 in the two groups of early and late bilinguals neither the conjunction nor the subtraction analysis provided suprathreshold activation clusters in the comparison between L1 and L2 The late bilinguals activated the following left-hemisphere areas in conjunction with the two languages: (i) the precentral gyrus; (ii) posterior-medial frontal gyrus; and (iii) the inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45 and DLPFC) The direct comparison between the two languages did not reveal any single region to be more consistently activated in L1 than in L2 engaged more consistently in following regions both in the left hemisphere: (i) the inferior frontal gyrus (region including the DLPFC); and (ii) the posterior-medial frontal gyrus We re-ran the previous analyses on a subgroup of highly proficient bilinguals (16 studies including the early bilinguals, 17 studies including the late bilinguals). The functional networks associated with either L1 or L2 are detailed in Tables 6.1, 6.2 for L1 and L2, respectively and are represented in Figure 5 Results of the single ALE meta-analysis on L1 in the two groups of proficient early and late bilinguals Results of the single ALE meta-analysis on L2 in the two groups of proficient early and late bilinguals Language networks associated with L1 and L2 in the groups of proficient early and late bilinguals Rendered templates of the main effect results for (A) proficient early bilinguals’ L1; (B) proficient late bilinguals’ L1; (C) proficient early bilinguals’ L2; (D) proficient late bilinguals’ L2 the functional activations associated with L1 emerged in the left: (i) middle temporal gyrus (area TE3—higher auditory cortex); and (ii) the posterior-medial frontal gyrus the functional network included the left: (i) posterior-medial frontal gyrus; and (ii) the inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45) The early bilinguals’ L2 significantly activated a portion of the left (i) inferior frontal gyrus (region including the DLPFC) The late bilinguals’ functional activations associated with L2 included different areas in the left hemisphere: (i) inferior parietal cortex; (ii) inferior frontal gyrus (including BA 45 and a region associable with the DLPFC); and (iii) posterior-medial frontal gyrus; bilateral activation was found in the (iv) caudate nuclei and (v) insulae Results of the between-group comparison are reported in Table 6.3 Results of the between-group ALE meta-analysis for L1s and L2s in proficient bilinguals the conjunction analysis provided a shared activation cluster between early and late bilinguals in the left (i) inferior frontal gyrus (region including the DLPFC) suprathreshold activation clusters did not result from either comparison Results of the within-group comparison are reported in Table 6.4 Results of the within-group ALE meta-analysis for L1s and L2s in proficient bilinguals the conjunction analysis showed a shared activation cluster between L1 and L2 in the left (i) inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45) neither comparison provided suprathreshold activation clusters The present meta-analysis aimed to inspect whether AoA and the traditional classification in early and late bilinguals have an actual role in shaping the bilingual language brain networks even when accounting for the level of proficiency We hence identified the two groups of early and late bilinguals (by taking 6 years of age as the AoA cutoff) and also a subgroup of very early bilinguals in order to investigate the effect of the simultaneous acquisition of two languages The first preliminary analyses were comprehensive of both the languages the participants knew as we wanted to obtain a global overview of the whole language network in the three groups We then performed more focused analyses to assess the functional networks specifically associated with each language and between- and within-group comparisons between the languages the conventional classification in early and late bilinguals reflected actual differences in the related brain networks we replicated these analyses by including only the highly proficient bilinguals in order to check whether AoA was still relevant when proficiency was comparable (and high) between early and late bilinguals We carried out these language-specific analyses only for the late bilinguals and for the early bilinguals for which the identification of the first and second language was possible Early and late bilinguals also activated the right cerebellum, which is reciprocally connected with the left neocortex and whose involvement in language is becoming progressively more apparent (see for an overview De Smet et al., 2013; Mariën et al., 2014) Another key area of this network has been proposed to be the pre-SMA The fact that very early bilinguals activated in a consistent manner in only a few regions could reflect two possible reasons it is reasonable that these bilinguals need the recruitment of a lower number of regions to perform the language tasks because the very precocious acquisition could imply a lower cognitive effort given that the resultant activation clusters did not include other relevant areas of the language network this finding may also reflect the low number of studies that have addressed very early language acquisition and the low number of provided foci (see the “Materials and Methods” section) need to be replicated once a suitable number of studies is available Whereas the previous analyses provided a general overview of the overall brain functioning in response to different AoA the subsequent analyses were devoted to the investigation of the language brain activations associated with each language Because a distinction between L1 and L2 in very early bilinguals was rarely possible we carried out this investigation separately for late bilinguals and for the early bilinguals for which such distinction was achievable the results showed different functional networks for early and late bilinguals activations (all left-sided) emerged in the classical language areas (i.e. and BA 45) and in regions devoted to cognitive control (i.e. even in early bilinguals and even when dealing with the first language there is the need to control and regulate the language use by possibly suppressing the activation of the second language which is likely to exert a strong interference the network of activations was more substantial for the group of late bilinguals compared to early bilinguals (who activated the superior parietal lobule in part probably because of the lower number of contrasts associated with the latter The late bilinguals’ functional activations were widespread and spanned from the left parietal lobe—both inferior and superior—to the left superior temporal gyrus frontal regions specifically devoted to language (i.e. BA 45 and pars orbitalis) or control (i.e. Some clusters of activation also emerged in the right hemisphere and concerned posterior areas located in the occipital cortex and angular gyrus we illustrated these hypotheses and stressed the role that some brain areas can hold in some language functions under specific conditions who adopted more lenient threshold parameters reported the findings from a similar subtraction analysis in which they compared the specific L2 activations between early and late bilinguals they did not find any region that was more consistently activated in the early bilinguals’ group find a specific late bilinguals’ activation in the region of the left superior frontal gyrus showing again the greater recruitment of executive control regions as the result of late L2 learning This analysis was exploratory as it included a small sample of studies With the increasing number of neuroimaging studies in bilinguals in future years it will be possible to have a suitable number of studies in each language domain to investigate the related networks in the two languages With regard to the within-group comparisons in the group of the early bilinguals, neither the conjunction nor the subtraction analyses between L1 and L2 provided significant findings. The stringent criteria of paper selection together with the relatively conservative thresholding parameters could possibly explain the discrepancy with Liu and Cao (2016) findings which showed more relevant L2 activations in the left frontal cortex and insula Trying to interpret these results in the light of the clinical findings on the bilingual patients with aphasia is quite tricky Clinical literature indeed reports a plethora of different cases in which the two languages were comparably affected (parallel aphasia) or not (differential aphasia); further the most affected language could be represented by either L1 or L2 The last analyses we performed aimed to investigate the language brain representation in early and late bilinguals by removing possible confounding effects due to proficiency we could perform the analyses only on the proficient bilinguals; as long as a high proficiency level was expected to reduce the cognitive effort associated with L2 different brain activations still emerged as the result of different AoA These analyses as well were almost exploratory the number of experiments included in each analysis was rather low (except for the late bilinguals’ L2) and this was probably the reason why the “classical” language network could not be traced and only a few activation clusters resulted even from the main effect analyses together with the application of stringent thresholds probably provided the most robust activation clusters for the inspected conditions which are therefore expected to be highly reliable L2 nevertheless requires the involvement of the executive functions although the cognitive load appeared to be much greater when appropriation occurred after the age of 6 activated the insula in both hemispheres and control areas such as the pre-SMA we have to remember that these findings might reflect the lower number of contrasts included in the early bilinguals’ analysis we did not carry out analyses for the main language domains separately first because our aim was to identify the most relevant brain regions independently from the assessed task because there was not an adequate number of studies to be included in these separate analyses as the different domains are expected to rely more on either AoA (i.e. morpho-syntax and phonology/articulation) or proficiency (i.e. future analyses should investigate how these factors modulate the brain representation of these domains Further, for reasons we have explained, we found lower-than-expected significant activations in the comparison between the two languages. Intraoperative stimulation mapping studies in bilingual patients showed that the two languages shared many language sites, whereas other sites appeared to be language-specific (e.g., Roux and Trémoulet, 2002; Roux et al., 2004) there was a certain inter-subject variability which could not be attributed uniquely to the different patients’ language history (e.g. These reports result from a clinical condition that might have induced brain reorganization processes and we cannot make a direct comparison with our findings they suggest the complex interplay between the diverse factors in shaping the language brain representation in bilingual people Factors such as the linguistic distance between the two known languages and possibly gender could modulate the differential representation of L1 and L2 Future studies should also address proficiency and other relevant parameters in order to allow for a reliable assessment of their role will contribute to a better understanding of the clinical 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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) SportsLogos.Net News News and blog on new sports logos and uniforms soccer and NCAA at Chris Creamer's Sports Logos Page SportsLogos.Net Italian Serie A side Udinese Calcio are marking their 125th anniversary with a special third kit that features crests from throughout the club’s history and worn in a match for the first time on Sunday as Udinese and Genoa battled to a 0-0 draw A tonal stripe runs vertically down the centre of the front of the shirt fading in and out around the sponsor logo with a diamond halftone pattern Inside the tonal stripe are representations of Udinese crests from throughout the club’s history It starts at the top with the star worn on the chest of the first Udinese team in 1896 (on a black shirt with white shorts and black socks) and goes forward in time as you move down the shirt Sponsor and manufacturer logos appear in white, as does a special 125th anniversary crest on the left chest. This anniversary crest features the shield and chevron from the current club crest Fellow Serie A side Torino FC marks their 115th anniversary this year with special edition kits made by Joma. The outfield player edition is solid maroon with white logos, while the goalkeeper version is black with a maroon collar, sleeve cuffs and logos. Both feature the bull from the club crest isolated on the left chest with the date of the club’s founding (Dec The tag inside the collar features seven scudettos marking the club’s first division championships and five coccardas for their Coppa Italia wins The club wore the jerseys in their Serie A match against Empoli FC on Thursday is rotated and runs down the right side of the front of the shirt Printed on the left sleeve is the date of the club’s founding (Aug Sampdoria will wear these kits for the first time against Lazio on Sunday Feature photo courtesy @Udinese_1896 / Twitter