Basque-Spanish Bilingual Aphasia: A Case-Study to Reveal Frequency-Based, Language-Agnostic Lexical Organization in Bilinguals

Abstract This study investigated whether language serves as the primary organizational axis dividing lexico-semantic representations in multilingual individuals, or whether language is a subsidiary feature to dominant organizing principles identified in monolingual individuals. To address this question, we examined the influence of two well-established principles of language organization—frequency and concreteness—on naming accuracy in a post-stroke bilingual individual with anomic aphasia (PWA). The participant, a highly proficient Basque-Spanish bilingual, underwent MRI scanning to delineate the extent and location of the lesion and completed a naming-by-definition task in both languages, along with a control group of 24 age-matched bilinguals. Stimuli were orthogonally varied by frequency (high/low) and concreteness (high/low). Generalized linear mixed models revealed main effects of both frequency and concreteness on naming accuracy. Notably, while healthy controls showed a robust concreteness effect—with concrete words yielding higher accuracy—the PWA exhibited a disproportionately larger impairment for low-frequency words. This pattern, consistent with the lesion’s location to the inferior temporal gyrus, highlights a specific vulnerability of frequency-based lexical representations following temporal lobe damage. Importantly, the bilingual PWA demonstrated strikingly similar error rates across languages, yet an item-level analysis revealed that the specific words affected differed between the two languages. These findings (i) clarify the role of the inferior temporal gyrus in lexical organization, (ii) suggest that bilinguals possess an integrated lexical system governed by general cognitive principles, and (iii) challenge the notion that language itself is the dominant axis of organization in the bilingual mind/brain.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Neurobiology of Language

• Publication date

  2025-04-11

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Linguistics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1162/nol_a_00170PMID 40589704PMCID 12208705
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Bilingual language processing relies on shared semantic representations that are modulated by each language

  2025cited by this paper
• The structure and statistics of language jointly shape cross-frequency neural dynamics during spoken language comprehension

  2024cited by this paper
• How lexical frequency, language dominance and noise affect listening effort – insights from pupillometry

  2024cited by this paper
• Word frequency and reading demands modulate brain activation in the inferior frontal gyrus

  2023cited by this paper
• Shared and distinct neural correlates of first and second language morphological processing in bilingual brain

  2023cited by this paper
• Unproctored online exams provide meaningful assessment of student learning

  2023cited by this paper
• From Lab-Testing to Web-Testing in Cognitive Research: Who You Test is More Important than how You Test

  2023cited by this paper
• Concrete and Abstract Concepts in Primary Progressive Aphasia and Alzheimer’s Disease: A Scoping Review

  2023cited by this paper
• Preface.

  2022cited by this paper
• Proper names and personal identity.

  2022cited by this paper
• Two bee oar knot too be: the effects of orthography and bilingualism on spoken homophone production

  2022cited by this paper
• The neural correlates of abstract and concrete words.

  2022cited by this paper
• An ALE meta-analytical review of the neural correlates of abstract and concrete words

  2021cited by this paper
• The concreteness advantage in lexical decision does not depend on perceptual simulations.

  2021cited by this paper
• Inflection across Categories: Tracking Abstract Morphological Processing in Language Production with MEG

  2021cited by this paper
• A common selection mechanism at each linguistic level in bilingual and monolingual language production.

  2021cited by this paper
• Individual differences in representational similarity of first and second languages in the bilingual brain

  2021cited by this paper
• How well imageability, concreteness, perceptual strength, and action strength predict recognition memory, lexical decision, and reading aloud performance

  2021cited by this paper
• Overlapping but Language-Specific Mechanisms in Morphosyntactic Processing in Highly Competent L2 Acquired at School Entry: fMRI Evidence From an Alternating Language Switching Task

  2021cited by this paper
• Inferior parietal lobule is sensitive to different semantic similarity relations for concrete and abstract words.

  2020cited by this paper
• Earlier second language acquisition is associated with greater neural pattern dissimilarity between the first and second languages.

  2020cited by this paper
• Automated anatomical labelling atlas 3

  2020cited by this paper
• What Influences Language Impairment in Bilingual Aphasia? A Meta-Analytic Review

  2019cited by this paper
• Language Brain Representation in Bilinguals With Different Age of Appropriation and Proficiency of the Second Language: A Meta-Analysis of Functional Imaging Studies

  2019cited by this paper
• Bilingual aphasia: Explanations in population encoding

  2019cited by this paper
• Anatomical and functional changes in the brain after simultaneous interpreting training: A longitudinal study.

  2018cited by this paper
• Dissociating frequency and animacy effects in visual word processing: An fMRI study

  2018cited by this paper
• Brain bases of morphological processing in Chinese-English bilingual children.

  2017cited by this paper
• Commonality of neural representations of sentences across languages: Predicting brain activation during Portuguese sentence comprehension using an English‐based model of brain function

  2017cited by this paper
• Toward a brain-based componential semantic representation

  2016cited by this paper
• Mental Representations A Dual Coding Approach

  2016cited by this paper
• [Modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Test: standardization and norms of the test for a population sample in Spain].

  2016cited by this paper
• Neurobiology of language

  2016cited by this paper
• Coactivation in bilingual grammars: A computational account of code mixing

  2016cited by this paper
• Evaluating cognitive models of visual word recognition using fMRI: Effects of lexical and sublexical variables

  2016cited by this paper
• What do pauses in narrative production reveal about the nature of word retrieval deficits in PPA?

  2015cited by this paper
• Differing contributions of inferior prefrontal and anterior temporal cortex to concrete and abstract conceptual knowledge

  2015influential reference
• Speaking two languages at once: unconscious native word form access in second language production.

  2014cited by this paper
• Analysis of abstract and concrete word processing in persons with aphasia and age-matched neurologically healthy adults using fMRI

  2014cited by this paper
• EHME: a New Word Database for Research in Basque Language

  2014cited by this paper
• Concreteness ratings for 40 thousand generally known English word lemmas

  2014cited by this paper
• Machine learning for neuroimaging with scikit-learn

  2014cited by this paper
• Parallel language activation during word processing in bilinguals: Evidence from word production in sentence context*

  2013cited by this paper
• Language control in bilinguals: The adaptive control hypothesis

  2013cited by this paper
• EsPal: One-stop shopping for Spanish word properties

  2013cited by this paper
• Semantic Diversity Accounts for the “Missing” Word Frequency Effect in Stroke Aphasia: Insights Using a Novel Method to Quantify Contextual Variability in Meaning

  2011cited by this paper
• Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Plays an Executive Regulation Role in Comprehension of Abstract Words: Convergent Neuropsychological and Repetitive TMS Evidence

  2010cited by this paper
• Language-specific activations in the brain: Evidence from inflectional processing in bilinguals.

  2009cited by this paper
• Syllable congruency and word frequency effects on brain activation

  2009cited by this paper
• Functional Neuroanatomy of Contextual Acquisition of Concrete and Abstract Words

  2009cited by this paper
• Imagery or meaning? Evidence for a semantic origin of category-specific brain activity in metabolic imaging

  2008cited by this paper
• Sensitivity to orthographic familiarity in the occipito-temporal region

  2008cited by this paper
• The Face of Bimodal Bilingualism

  2008cited by this paper
• Neural Correlates of Concreteness in Semantic Categorization

  2007cited by this paper
• The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals.

  2007influential reference
• Constructions as categories of language

  2007cited by this paper
• Review of language organisation in bilingual patients: what can we learn from direct brain mapping?

  2007cited by this paper
• Spatial and Frequency Differences of Neuromagnetic Activities in Processing Concrete and Abstract Words

  2007cited by this paper
• Native and non-native reading of sentences: An fMRI experiment

  2006cited by this paper
• Neuroanatomically separable e V ects of imageability and grammatical class during single-word comprehension

  2006cited by this paper
• Syntax production in bilinguals.

  2006cited by this paper
• Effect of word and syllable frequency on activation during lexical decision and reading aloud

  2006cited by this paper
• The impact of affect and frequency on lexical decision: The role of the amygdala and inferior frontal cortex

  2006cited by this paper
• Content Differences for Abstract and Concrete Concepts

  2005cited by this paper
• Content Differences for Abstract and Concrete Concept

  2005cited by this paper
• Modulation of the semantic system by word imageability

  2005influential reference
• The neural basis of first and second language processing.

  2005cited by this paper
• Imageability effects in normal Spanish–English bilingual adults and in aphasia: Evidence from naming to definition and semantic priming tasks

  2005cited by this paper
• Distinct Brain Systems for Processing Concrete and Abstract Concepts

  2005cited by this paper
• The visual word form area and the frequency with which words are encountered: evidence from a parametric fMRI study

  2004cited by this paper
• Neural correlates of lexical and sublexical processes in reading.

  2004cited by this paper
• Retrieval of abstract semantics

  2004cited by this paper
• Correlated functional changes of the prefrontal cortex in twins induced by classroom education of second language.

  2004cited by this paper
• ORIGINS OF NONWORD PHONOLOGICAL ERRORS IN APHASIC PICTURE NAMING

  2004cited by this paper
• The organization of conceptual knowledge: the evidence from category-specific semantic deficits.

  2003cited by this paper
• Distinct brain representations for early and late learned words

  2003cited by this paper
• 9. Neural basis of lexicon and grammar in L2 acquisition

  2003cited by this paper
• Comparison of block and event‐related fMRI designs in evaluating the word‐frequency effect

  2003cited by this paper
• Retrieval of Visual, Auditory, and Abstract Semantics

  2002cited by this paper
• Neural Correlates for the Acquisition of Natural Language Syntax

  2002cited by this paper
• Category specific access dysphasia.

  2002cited by this paper
• Phonological neighborhood effects in aphasic speech errors: spontaneous and structured contexts.

  2002cited by this paper
• fMRI Evidence for Dual Routes to the Mental Lexicon in Visual Word Recognition

  2002cited by this paper
• An fMRI Study of Bilingual Sentence Comprehension and Workload

  2002cited by this paper
• The neural bases of sentence comprehension: a fMRI examination of syntactic and lexical processing.

  2001cited by this paper
• The bilingual brain as revealed by functional neuroimaging

  2001cited by this paper
• The specific-word frequency effect: implications for the representation of homophones in speech production.

  2001cited by this paper
• Overlap and dissociation of semantic processing of Chinese characters, English words, and pictures: evidence from fMRI.

  2000cited by this paper
• An Object and Action Naming Battery

  2000cited by this paper
• Conceptual structure and the structure of concepts: a distributed account of category-specific deficits.

  2000cited by this paper
• Mandarin and English Single Word Processing Studied with Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

  1999cited by this paper
• Word and picture matching: a PET study of semantic category effects.

  1999cited by this paper
• Studies in neurology. 1920. Aphasia and kindred disorders of speech. 1926.

  1998cited by this paper
• Semantic factors in verb retrieval: an effect of complexity.

  1998cited by this paper
• The origins of formal paraphasias in aphasics' picture naming.

  1997cited by this paper
• Word frequency effects in speech production: Retrieval of syntactic information and of phonological form

  1994influential reference
• Evidence from aphasia for the role of proper names as pure referring expressions

  1989cited by this paper
• Generating proper names: A case of selective inability

  1988cited by this paper
• Progressive language impairment without dementia: a case with isolated category specific semantic defect.

  1988cited by this paper
• The Assessment of Bilingual Aphasia

  1987cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.