Another medical topic concerning bilingualism:
A professor of mine was telling us about how one of his older colleagues, and a prolific polymath of a scholar, had recently suffered a stroke. Though he lectured in Hebrew for years, and was no doubt fluent in English, German, French, etc., following the stroke, he was able to communicate only in Yiddish, his first language.
Apparently, there is a group of scientists who have formed the Bi- and Multi-lingual Stroke Group, which examines these types of cases in order to gain a better understanding of how strokes affect the brain as well as “developing new language learning techniques or new behavioural treatments for stroke patients to further enhance brain plasticity and language recovery.”
For volunteer information (they need brains to scan) and qualifications, see here. And you get a free copy of your brain scan as a souvenir.
