Emotional processing in bilinguals: a systematic review aimed at identifying future trends in neurolinguistics

Abstract This review is one of the first studies to discuss the status of research on emotional processing in a healthy bilingual brain. Few articles about emotion and cognition coupling have examined how the bilingual brain differs in processing emotional stimuli from the monolingual brain in neuroimaging studies. Having diverse perspectives, tools, and methodologies in interdisciplinary research can help build our understanding of the connection between the mind, language, and emotions. This systematic review uses Moher et al., (2015) PRISMA-P to synthesize relevant publications. In this review study, we discuss common discrepancies, the techniques used to elicit data and the objectives of the emotion and cognition interaction in neuroimaging, psychophysiological and cognitive paradigms. Our findings suggest the focus of future research on simultaneous bilinguals, extended narratives instead of decontextualized stimuli and comparison of different modalities. We provide valuable insight for neurolinguistic researchers in regard to the various limitations in the existing literature that hinder the successful integration of emotion and language studies into the field of neurolinguistics.