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Tero Toivanen

The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages: Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

brain bilingual research skills second language monolingual

shared by Tero Toivanen on 22 Jan 10 - Cached
  • The ability to speak a second language isn’t the only thing that distinguishes bilingual people from their monolingual counterparts—their brains work differently, too. Research has shown, for instance, that children who know two languages more easily solve problems that involve misleading cues.
  • The findings suggest that after learning a second language, people never look at words the same way again.
  • “The most important implication of the study is that even when a per­son is reading in his or her native language, there is an influence of knowledge of the nondominant second language,” Van Assche notes. “Becoming a bilingual changes one of people’s most automatic skills.”
  • Tero Toivanen on 22 Jan 10
     
    "The most important implication of the study is that even when a per son is reading in his or her native language, there is an influence of knowledge of the nondominant second language," Van Assche notes. "Becoming a bilingual changes one of people's most automatic skills."
Tero Toivanen

Selective aphasia in a brain damaged bilingual patient : Neurophilosophy - 0 views

scienceblogs.com/...damageed_bilungual_patient.php

brain bilingual Arabic Hebrew CT scan frontal lobe parietal lobe crationomy hemorrhage

shared by Tero Toivanen on 11 Jul 09 - Cached
  • A unique case study published in the open access journal Behavioral and Brain Functions sheds some light on this matter. The study, by Raphiq Ibrahim, a neurologist at the University of Haifa, describes a bilingual Arabic-Hebrew speaker who incurred brain damage following a viral infection. Consequently, the patient experienced severe deficits in Hebrew but not in Arabic. The findings support the view that specific components of a first and second language are represented by different substrates in the brain.
  • A native Arabic speaker, he learned Hebrew at an early age (4th grade) and later used it competently both professionally and academically.
  • A CT scan showed that he had suffered a massive hemorrhage in the left temporal lobe, which was compressing the tissue on both sides of the central sulcus, the prominent gfissure which separates the frontal and parietal lobes.
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  • A craniotomy was performed to relieve the pressure, and afterwards another scan showed moderate hemorrhage and herpes encephalitis in the left temporal lobe, and another hemorrhage beneath the outer membrane (the dura) lying over the right frontal lobe.
  • During his 2 month stay there, he developed epileptic seizures which originated in the left temporal lobe, and amnestic aphasia (an inability to name objects or to recognize their written or spoken names). 
  • After the rehabilitation period, a series of linguistic tests was administered to determine the extent of his speech deficits. M.H. exhibited deficits in both languages, but the most severe deficits were seen only in Hebrew. In this language he had a severe difficulty in recalling words and names, so that his speech was non-fluent and interrupted by frequent pauses. He had difficulty understanding others' spoken Hebrew, and also had great difficulty reading and writing Hebrew. In Arabic, his native language, all of these abilities were affected only mildy.
  • The results support a neurolinguistic model in which the brain of bilinguals contains a semantic system (which represents word meanings) which is common to both languages and which is connected to independent lexical systems (which encode the vocabulary of each language). The findings further suggest that the second language (in this case, Hebrew) is represented by an independent subsystem which does not represent the first language (Arabic) and is more succeptible to brain damage.
  • Tero Toivanen on 11 Jul 09
     
    A unique case study published in the open access journal Behavioral and Brain Functions sheds some light on this matter. The study, by Raphiq Ibrahim, a neurologist at the University of Haifa, describes a bilingual Arabic-Hebrew speaker who incurred brain damage following a viral infection. Consequently, the patient experienced severe deficits in Hebrew but not in Arabic. The findings support the view that specific components of a first and second language are represented by different substrates in the brain.
Tero Toivanen

New Light On Nature Of Broca's Area: Rare Procedure Documents How Human Brain Computes ... - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...091015141500.htm

brain Broca's area Wernicke's area language cerebral cortex Sahin

shared by Tero Toivanen on 17 Oct 09 - Cached
  • The study – which provides a picture of language processing in the brain with unprecedented clarity – will be published in the October 16 issue of the journal Science.
  • "Two central mysteries of human brain function are addressed in this study: one, the way in which higher cognitive processes such as language are implemented in the brain and, two, the nature of what is perhaps the best-known region of the cerebral cortex, called Broca's area," said first author Ned T. Sahin, PhD, post-doctoral fellow in the UCSD Department of Radiology and Harvard University Department of Psychology.
  • The study demonstrates that a small piece of the brain can compute three different things at different times – within a quarter of a second – and shows that Broca's area doesn't just do one thing when processing language.
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  • The procedure, called Intra-Cranial Electrophysiology (ICE), allowed the researchers to resolve brain activity related to language with spatial accuracy down to the millimeter and temporal accuracy down to the millisecond.
  • "We showed that distinct linguistic processes are computed within small regions of Broca's area, separated in time and partially overlapping in space," said Sahin. Specifically, the researchers found patterns of neuronal activity indicating lexical, grammatical and articulatory computations at roughly 200, 320 and 450 milliseconds after the target word was presented. These patterns were identical across nouns and verbs and consistent across patients.
  • Tero Toivanen on 17 Oct 09
     
    "Two central mysteries of human brain function are addressed in this study: one, the way in which higher cognitive processes such as language are implemented in the brain and, two, the nature of what is perhaps the best-known region of the cerebral cortex, called Broca's area," said first author Ned T. Sahin, PhD, post-doctoral fellow in the UCSD Department of Radiology and Harvard University Department of Psychology.
Tero Toivanen

Wired 14.02: Buddha on the Brain - 0 views

www.wired.com/...dalai.html

brain meditation Dalai Lama Buddha buddhism Tibet neuroscience

shared by Tero Toivanen on 28 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Davidson's research created a stir among brain scientists when his results suggested that, in the course of meditating for tens of thousands of hours, the monks had actually altered the structure and function of their brains.
  • Lutz asked Ricard to meditate on "unconditional loving-kindness and compassion." He immediately noticed powerful gamma activity - brain waves oscillating at roughly 40 cycles per second -�indicating intensely focused thought. Gamma waves are usually weak and difficult to see. Those emanating from Ricard were easily visible, even in the raw EEG output. Moreover, oscillations from various parts of the cortex were synchronized - a phenomenon that sometimes occurs in patients under anesthesia.
  • The researchers had never seen anything like it. Worried that something might be wrong with their equipment or methods, they brought in more monks, as well as a control group of college students inexperienced in meditation. The monks produced gamma waves that were 30 times as strong as the students'. In addition, larger areas of the meditators' brains were active, particularly in the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for positive emotions.
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  • In the traditional view, the brain becomes frozen with the onset of adulthood, after which few new connections form. In the past 20 years, though, scientists have discovered that intensive training can make a difference. For instance, the portion of the brain that corresponds to a string musician's fingering hand grows larger than the part that governs the bow hand - even in musicians who start playing as adults. Davidson's work suggested this potential might extend to emotional centers
  • But Davidson saw something more. The monks had responded to the request to meditate on compassion by generating remarkable brain waves. Perhaps these signals indicated that the meditators had attained an intensely compassionate state of mind. If so, then maybe compassion could be exercised like a muscle; with the right training, people could bulk up their empathy. And if meditation could enhance the brain's ability to produce "attention and affective processes" - emotions, in the technical language of Davidson's study - it might also be used to modify maladaptive emotional responses like depression.
  • Davidson and his team published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in November 2004. The research made The Wall Street Journal, and Davidson instantly became a celebrity scientist.
  • Tero Toivanen on 28 Jun 09
     
    Davidson's research created a stir among brain scientists when his results suggested that, in the course of meditating for tens of thousands of hours, the monks had actually altered the structure and function of their brains
Tero Toivanen

» Brain Plasticity: How learning changes your brain   « Brain Fitness Revolut... - 0 views

www.sharpbrains.com/...ow-learning-changes-your-brain

brain neuroplasticity learning

shared by Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • A surprising consequence of neuroplasticity is that the brain activity associated with a given function can move to a different location as a consequence of normal experience, brain damage or recovery.
  • The brain compensates for damage by reorganizing and forming new connections between intact neurons. In order to reconnect, the neurons need to be stimulated through activity.
  • Research has shown that in fact the brain never stops changing through learning. Plasticity IS the capacity of the brain to change with learning. Changes associated with learning occur mostly at the level of the connections between neurons. New connections can form and the internal structure of the existing synapses can change.
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  • It looks like learning a second language is possible through functional changes in the brain: the left inferior parietal cortex is larger in bilingual brains than in monolingual brains.
  • For instance, London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus (in the posterior region) than London bus drivers (Maguire, Woollett, & Spiers, 2006)…. Why is that? It is because this region of the hippocampus is specialized in acquiring and using complex spatial information in order to navigate efficiently. Taxi drivers have to navigate around London whereas bus drivers follow a limited set of routes.
  • Did you know that when you become an expert in a specific domain, the areas in your brain that deal with this type of skill will grow?
  • Plastic changes also occur in musicians brains compared to non-musicians.
  • They found that gray matter (cortex) volume was highest in professional musicians, intermediate in amateur musicians, and lowest in non-musicians in several brain areas involved in playing music: motor regions, anterior superior parietal areas and inferior temporal areas.
  • Medical students’ brains showed learning-induced changes in regions of the parietal cortex as well as in the posterior hippocampus. These regions of the brains are known to be involved in memory retrieval and learning.
  • Tero Toivanen on 23 May 09
     
    A surprising consequence of neuroplasticity is that the brain activity associated with a given function can move to a different location as a consequence of normal experience, brain damage or recovery.
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