There is no causal account of recovery patterns in bilingual aphasia. We propose that the causal mechanisms can be partially revealed by combining neuropsychological and neuroimaging methods. We briefly review the potentials and limitations associated with functional neuroimaging experiments on normal and neurologically impaired patients and then focus on the different levels of description required to reveal the causal basis of recovery patterns in bilingual aphasics. Finally, we suggest how functional imaging investigations might be meaningfully undertaken with bilingual aphasic patients. We illustrate our argument with respect to five different patterns of recovery and consider the theoretical and practical implications of such research.