Aptitude, not polyglotism, is associated with efficient activation in core language areas.

Understanding the cognitive architecture of the human language faculty requires exploring the boundaries of both predisposition and environmental experience. However, previous research on extraordinary multilingualism has often confounded language aptitude with multilingual experience, obscuring their distinct neural correlates. Here, we leveraged a linguistically diverse sample (N=121) and extensive behavioural testing to dissociate language aptitude from multilingual experience, modelling both dimensions continuously in whole-brain speech processing. Language aptitude and multilingual experience were weakly related, and their dissociation was also evident at the neural level. Higher language aptitude showed a neural signature of efficiency, characterised by lower activation in core perisylvian regions. In contrast, higher multilingualism was associated with greater engagement of regions implicated in narrative, multimodal, and memory processing, and with recruitment of traditional language hubs only during degraded speech processing, likely reflecting active attempts to decode unintelligible input. Finally, aptitude and experience interacted within sensorimotor regions. Continuous quantification of multilingual experience proved more sensitive than artificial grouping. By disentangling language aptitude from multilingual experience, this work provides a more precise account of the multilingual brain, and shows that its neurobiology can be better understood by modelling predisposition and experience as distinct but interacting dimensions.