Do subcortical structures control 'language selection' in polyglots? Evidence from pathological language mixing

In the field of multilinguism, 'switching' defines a mechanism operating au tomatically when speakers shift among different languages, While the neural basis of this mechanism is unknown, recent studies of polyglot aphasia hav e suggested a possible role of subcortical structures, We report a case of subcortical polyglot aphasia which provides further evidence for a role of the basal ganglia in the switching mechanism. A polyglot female (Armenian-E nglish-Italian), after a subcortical infarction in the language dominant he misphere, developed a non-fluent aphasia characterized by pathological mixi ng among these languages in oral production tasks. This case confirms that damage to subcortical structures may result in different types of dysfuncti on in the mechanisms implicated in the selection of languages.