1 Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2B4, Canada; Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3G 2A8, Canada. Electronic address: shanna.kousaie@mail.mcgill.ca.
2 Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3G 2A8, Canada; School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 1G1, Canada.
3 Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3G 2A8, Canada; Department of Psychology/Centre for Research in Human Development, Concordia University, Montreal, QC H4B 1R6, Canada; Bloomfield Centre for Research in Aging, Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research and Jewish General Hospital/McGill University Memory Clinic, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, QC H3T 1E2, Canada.
4 Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3G 2A8, Canada; School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 1G1, Canada; Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
5 Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3G 2A8, Canada; Department of Psychology, McGill University Montreal, QC H3A 1G1, Canada.
6 Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2B4, Canada; Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3G 2A8, Canada.
7 Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2B4, Canada.
8 Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2B4, Canada; Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3G 2A8, Canada. Electronic address: denise.klein@mcgill.ca.

Given the ubiquity of noisy environments and increasing globalization, the necessity to perceive speech in noise in a non-native language is common and necessary for successful communication. In the current investigation, bilingual individuals who learned their non-native language at different ages underwent magnetic resonance imaging while listening to sentences in both of their languages, in quiet and in noise. Sentence context was varied such that the final word could be of high or low predictability. Results show that early non-native language learning is associated with superior ability to benefit from contextual information behaviourally, and a pattern of neural recruitment in the left inferior frontal gyrus that suggests easier processing when perceiving non-native speech in noise. These findings have implications for our understanding of speech processing in non-optimal listening conditions and shed light on how individuals navigate every day complex communicative environments, in a native and non-native language.