Arturo E. Hernandez

Arturo E. Hernandez is a neuroscientist and cognitive psychologist specializing in bilingualism, language processing, and cognitive neuroscience. Hernandez serves as professor of psychology and director of the Laboratory for the Neural Bases of Bilingualism at the University of Houston. He earned a doctorate in cognitive science and psychology from the University of California, San Diego, where he worked with developmental psychologist Elizabeth Bates. His early career included postdoctoral research with Marta Kutas, focusing on neuroimaging methods.

Hernandez’s research examines the neural mechanisms underlying bilingual language processing and second language acquisition, integrating behavioral and neuroimaging techniques to explore how the brain manages multiple languages. He developed the theoretical framework of Neurocomputational Emergentism, which investigates how brain and cognition reorganize over time to support complex processes such as language. Hernandez’s studies on language switching in Spanish-English bilinguals have been widely cited in the fields of neurolinguistics and cognitive psychology. He has served on the National Institutes of Health Language and Communication Study Section and as editor-in-chief for the Journal of Neurolinguistics. Hernandez also serves as editor for Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Hernandez is the author of "The Bilingual Brain" (Oxford University Press) and "Mastery: How Learning Transforms Our Brains, Minds and Bodies" (Prometheus), and has published more than 80 journal articles on topics including bilingual brain development, neuroplasticity, and language learning. In "The Bilingual Brain," he explores how factors such as foreign language immersion, sleep deprivation, and brain injury can affect language retention and loss, drawing on decades of research into how multiple languages are stored and accessed in the brain. "Mastery" examines how new skills emerge from the combination and recombination of smaller components, synthesizing research from cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology.

Hernandez has received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and a Fulbright Global Scholar award. He was awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship to serve as a visiting professor at the Max Planck Institute for Mind and Brain in Leipzig, Germany, and a Fulbright Scholar Award to expand research on bilingualism and aging at the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language in San Sebastián, Spain. As director of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience graduate program, Hernandez advances research on bilingual brain function and mentors emerging scholars. His experience as a multilingual speaker informs his research on language, learning, and the human mind.