Congratulations to Assistant Professor Eleonora Rossi, PhD candidate Megan Nakamura, and their co-authors (Sergio Miguel Pereira Soares, Yanina Prystauka, Jason Rothman) on the publication of their recent paper, titled “Riding the (brain) waves! Using neural oscillations to inform bilingualism research”, in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. Link to the article is here and the abstract is below. Way to go Dr. Rossi, Megan, and team!
The study of the brains’ oscillatory activity has been a standard technique to gain insights into human neurocognition for a relatively long time. However, as a complementary analysis to ERPs, only very recently has it been utilized to study bilingualism and its neural underpinnings. Here, we provide a theoretical and methodological starter for scientists in the (psycho)linguistics and neurocognition of bilingualism field(s) to understand the bases and applications of this analytical tool. Towards this goal, we provide a description of the characteristics of the human neural (and its oscillatory) signal, followed by an in-depth description of various types of EEG oscillatory analyses, supplemented by figures and relevant examples. We then utilize the scant, yet emergent, literature on neural oscillations and bilingualism to highlight the potential of how analyzing neural oscillations can advance our understanding of the (psycho)linguistic and neurocognitive understanding of bilingualism.