The Neurobiology of Learning: Perspectives From Second Language Acquisition

This book constitutes a timely contribution to the existing literature by presenting a relatively comprehensive, neurobiological account of certain aspects of second language acquisition. It represents the collaborative efforts of members of the Neurobiology of Language Research Group in the Applied Linguistics and TESL Department at UCLA. Members of the group are trained in neurobiology and then use this knowledge to develop biological accounts of various aspects of applied linguistics.

The volume avoids the corticocentric bias that characterizes many brain-language publications--both cortical and subcortical structures receive their appropriate attention. In addition, it demonstrates that enough is presently known about the brain to inform our conceptualizations of how humans acquire second languages, thus, it provides a refreshingly novel, highly integrative contribution to the (second) language acquisition literature.