The bilingual brain, pushed to its limits: Neurocognitive adaptability in simultaneous interpreters

GARCÍA, ADOLFO M.

Belo Horizonte

Otro; Ciclo de Conferencias del Grupo LETRA; 2017

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Within the vast bilingual population, simultaneous interpreters (SIs) stand out by the exceedingly demanding processing conditions they face in professional settings. Indeed, the need to comprehend oral discourse in one language and rendering it in another as it unfolds, under strict time constraints, pushes verbal and non-verbal mechanisms to their limits. Therefore, SIs offer a unique model to assess how capable the bilingual brain is for experience-driven changes under stringent circumstances. In this conference, I will review multiple studies to answer three relevant, overarching questions: (i) how do the neurobiological systems mediating bilingual cognition adapt to the extreme demands faced by SIs?; (ii) which of the associated verbal and non-verbal functions evince behavioral enhancements in this population?; and (iii) what are the immediate challenges in this flourishing research field? In brief, this is an invitation to understand how extreme bilingual experiences influence cognition at large and, more generally, how the human mind adapts to the particular demands we may place on it.