Language lateralisation in late proficient bilinguals: A lexical decision fMRI study

► Cortical activations during lexical decision tasks were compared between late proficient bilinguals and monolinguals. ► Bilinguals showed weaker language lateralisation during L2 (English) than monolinguals. ► Bilinguals recruited additional brain areas for both native and L2 languages, possibly as a result of greater cortical effort. ► Age of L2 acquisition was the main determinant of language representation in bilinguals.