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"By peering into students' brains, a recent study, published in the journal NeuroImage, found that learning languages can help bulk up the brain."

"not every iPhone application can "learn" words. Notes seems to be brain-dead in that regard. At the same time, using Safari's Google text entry field worked every time, expanding the database and adding new items to my keyboard dictionary. "

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now genetically engineered a strain of mice whose FOXP2 gene has been swapped out for the human version. In a region of the brain called the basal ganglia, known in people to be involved in language, the humanized mice grew nerve cells that had a more complex structure. Baby mice utter ultrasonic whistles when removed from their mothers. The humanized baby mice, when isolated, made whistles that had a slightly lower pitch, among other differences, Dr. Enard says. Dr. Enard argues that putting significant human genes into mice is the only feasible way of exploring the essential differences between people and chimps, our closest living relatives.