Bilingual language processing relies on shared semantic representations that are modulated by each language (Chen et al., PNAS, 2026)
February 24, 2026
We performed fMRI scans of English-Chinese bilinguals while they read natural narratives in each language. Semantic representations are largely shared between languages, but finer-grained differences systematically alter how the same meaning is represented. Semantic brain representations in bilinguals are shared across languages but modulated by each language.