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Dr. Joy Hirsch, head of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital's functional M.R.I. Laboratory, and her graduate student, Karl Kim, found that second languages are stored differently in the human brain, depending on when they are learned. Babies who learn two languages simultaneously, and apparently effortlessly, have a single brain region for generating complex speech, researchers say. But people who learn a second language in adolescence or adulthood possess two such brain regions, one for each language. To explore where languages lie in the brain, Dr. Hirsch recruited 12 healthy bilingual people from New York City. Ten different languages were represented in the group. Half had learned two languages in infancy. The other half began learning a second language around age 11 and had acquired fluency by 19 after living in the country where the language was spoken. With their heads inside the M.R.I. machine, subjects thought silently about what they had done the day before using complex sentences, first in one language, then in the other. The machine detected increases in blood flow, indicating where in the brain this thinking took place. Activity was noted in Wernicke's area, a region devoted to understanding the meaning of words and the subject matter of spoken language, or semantics, as well as Broca's area, a region dedicated to the execution of speech, as well as some deep grammatical aspects of language. None of the 12 bilinguals had two separate Wernicke's areas, Dr. Hirsch said. But there were dramatic differences in Broca's areas, Dr. Hirsch said. In people who had learned both languages in infancy, there was only one uniform Broca's region for both languages, a dot of tissue containing about 30,000 neurons. Among those who had learned a second language in adolescence, however, Broca's area seemed to be divided into two distinct areas. Only one area was activated for each language. These two areas lay close to each other but were always separate, Dr. Hirsch s

Other, non-human primates have Broca's and Wernicke's areas in their brains, as do humans. In both species, the Broca's region represents non-linguistic hand and mouth movements. Evidence also suggests that both species may have mirror neurons in this region that are involved in understanding the actions and intentions of others. In both macaques and humans, this region is likely involved in producing orofacial expressions and in understanding the intentions behind orofacial expressions of others. In humans, it has evolved an additional communicative function, namely speech production. Interestingly however, it does not appear to be involved in monkey vocalizations, which are instead mediated by limbic and brainstem areas. In both species, the region represents non-linguistic hand and mouth movements. Evidence also suggests that both species may have mirror neurons in this region that are involved in understanding the actions and intentions of others. In both macaques and humans, this region is likely involved in producing orofacial expressions and in understanding the intentions behind orofacial expressions of others. In humans, it has evolved an additional communicative function, namely speech production. However, unlike in humans, Broca's area does not appear to be involved in monkey vocalizations, which are instead mediated by limbic and brainstem areas. Regarding Wernicke's area, which is responsible for language comprehension in humans, evidence suggests that the left superior temporal gyrus is specialized for processing species-specific calls in macaques, just as it is specialized for speech comprehension in humans.

This site is very insightful as to the differences in language development in the brain between those that learn a second language in childhood and those that learn the language as adults. It explains briefly the idea of a critical period and discusses the interesting aspects that come along with learning a second language later in life. It mentions Broca's and Wernicke's area.

Author Sena Moore writes about how music can re-wire our brains for speech. Singing and speaking activate similar areas on both sides of the brain, primarily in the motor production and sensory feedback areas. Singing, however, also activates the right hemisphere in some areas more strongly than the left. Speech is a left-hemisphere-dominate function. In other words, similar networks in the brain associated with vocal production are activated when a person is singing and when s/he is speaking. And the "stronger right hemisphere" activation supports the clinical observation that those who cannot speak because of damage to the left hemisphere speech areas known as Broca's area can still produce words by singing them.

Dyslexia is the most common learning disability in the U.S. Scientists are exploring how human brains learn to read, and are discovering new ways that brains with dyslexia can learn to cope. 2 areas on the left side of the brain are key for reading: 1. the left temporoparietal cortex: traditionally used to process spoken language. When learning to read, we start using it to sound out words. 2. the occipitotemporal cortex: part of the visual processing center, located at the base of our brain, behind our ears. A person who never learned to read uses this part of the brain to recognize objects - like a toaster or a chair. But, as we become fluent readers, we train this brain area to recognize letters and words visually. These words are called sight words: any word that you can see and instantly know without thinking about the letters and sounds. This requires retraining the brain. When recognizing a chair, the brain naturally sees it from many different angles - left, right, up, down - and, regardless of the perspective, the brain knows it is a chair. But that doesn't work for letters. Look at a lowercase 'b' from the backside of the page, and it looks like a lowercase 'd.' They are the same basic shape and, yet, two totally different letters. But, as it does with a chair, the brain wants to recognize them as the same object. Everyone - not just people with dyslexia - has to teach the brain not to conflate 'b' and 'd'. The good news: intervention and training can help. At the end of the six week training sessions with dyslexics, the brain areas typically associated with reading, in the left hemisphere, became more active. Additionally, right hemisphere areas started lighting up and helping out with the reading process. The lead scientist, Dr. Eden, says this is similar to what scientists see in stroke victims, where other parts of the brain start compensating.

Excellent study. "While it has long been recognized that certain areas in the brain's left hemisphere enable us to understand and produce language, scientists are still figuring out exactly how those areas divvy up the highly complex processes necessary to comprehend and produce language. ... Two brain areas called Broca's region and Wernicke's region serve as the main computing hubs underlying language processing, with dense bundles of nerve fibers linking the two ... Working with patients suffering from language impairments because of a variety of neurodegenerative diseases, Wilsons' team used brain imaging and language tests to disentangle the roles played by the two pathways. ... The study marks the first time it has been shown that upper and lower tracts play distinct functional roles in language processing."

While the left hemisphere of the brain is where the processing and understanding of language is, different sections of the brain control different parts of language. Two separate areas of the brain control the ability to remember and understand specific words, and the other controls how we construct sentences and make sense of them. If one of these sections is damaged, the other can still work properly, so it is possible to be able to remember words and what they mean but not know how to create sentences.

Using a brain-imaging technique that examines the entire infant brain, University of Washington researchers have found that the anatomy of certain brain areas - the hippocampus and cerebellum - can predict children's language abilities at one year of age. Infants with a greater concentration of gray and white matter in the cerebellum and the hippocampus showed greater language ability at age 1, as measured by babbling, recognition of familiar names and words, and ability to produce different types of sounds. This is the first study to identify a relationship between language and the cerebellum and hippocampus in infants. Neither brain area is well-known for its role in language: the cerebellum is typically linked to motor learning, while the hippocampus is commonly recognized as a memory processor. "Looking at the whole brain produced a surprising result and scientists live for surprises. It wasn't the language areas of the infant brain that predicted their future linguistic skills, but instead brain areas linked to motor abilities and memory processing," Kuhl said. "Infants have to listen and memorize the sound patterns used by the people in their culture, and then coax their own mouths and tongues to make these sounds in order join the social conversation and get a response from their parents." The findings could reflect infants' abilities to master the motor planning for speech and to develop the memory requirements for keeping the sound patterns in mind. "The brain uses many general skills to learn language," Kuhl said. "Knowing which brain regions are linked to this early learning could help identify children with developmental disabilities and provide them with early interventions that will steer them back toward a typical developmental path."

The human voice appears to trigger pleasure circuits in the brains of typical kids, but not children with autism, a Stanford University team reports. The finding could explain why many children with autism seem indifferent to spoken words. The Stanford team used functional MRI to compare the brains of 20 children who had autism spectrum disorders and 19 typical kids. In typical kids there was a strong connection between areas that respond to the human voice and areas that release the feel-good chemical dopamine, but that connection was reduced in autistic children. Connections between voice areas and areas involved in emotion-related learning also were weaker, creating greater communication difficulties. The new study's suggestion that motivation is the problem could explain why speech often comes late to children with autism even though the brain circuit involved in processing spoken words seems to function normally; the reward circuitry isn't working the way it does in typical children.

An interesting slide shows overlay between monkeys' area for mirror neurons and Broca's area in humans

Seems to have a security feature that's locked me out: Forbidden You don't have permission to access /Page/docs/.../Corballis-presentation.pdf on this server.

Are the 10% of people who are left-handed and of those whose language is located in the brain's right hemisphere the same? Is the location of language areas in the brain correlated to handedness? Through an innovative approach using a large psychometric and brain imaging database, researchers demonstrated that the location of language areas in the brain is independent of left- or right-handedness, except for a very small proportion of left-handed individuals whose right hemisphere is dominant for both manual work and language.

Through an innovative approach using a large psychometric and brain imaging database, researchers have demonstrated that the location of language areas in the brain is independent of left- or right-handedness, except for a very small proportion of left-handed individuals whose right hemisphere is dominant for both manual work and language.

Through an innovative approach using a large psychometric and brain imaging database, researchers have demonstrated that the location of language areas in the brain is independent of left- or right-handedness, except for a very small proportion of left-handed individuals whose right hemisphere is dominant for both manual work and language.

Researchers from King's College London Institute of Psychiatry, in collaboration with Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and the University of Barcelona, mapped the neural pathways involved in word learning among humans. They found that the arcuate fasciculus, a collection of nerve fibres connecting auditory regions at the temporal lobe with the motor area located at the frontal lobe in the left hemisphere of the brain, allows the 'sound' of a word to be connected to the regions responsible for its articulation. Differences in the development of these auditory-motor connections may explain differences in people's ability to learn words. Researchers used diffusion tensor imaging to image the structure of the brain before a word learning task and functional MRI, to detect the regions in the brain that were most active during the task. They found a strong relationship between the ability to remember words and the structure of arcuate fasciculus, which connects two brain areas: the territory of Wernicke, related to auditory language decoding, and Broca's area, which coordinates the movements associated with speech and the language processing. In participants able to learn words more successfully their arcuate fasciculus was more myelinated i.e. the nervous tissue facilitated faster conduction of the electrical signal. In addition the activity between the two regions was more co-ordinated in these participants. Dr Catani concludes, "Now we understand that this is how we learn new words, our concern is that children will have less vocabulary as much of their interaction is via screen, text and email rather than using their external prosthetic memory. This research reinforces the need for us to maintain the oral tradition of talking to our children."

This article talks about the disadvantage low-income children face in regards to language acquisition. Studies show that children living in low-income areas in comparison to children from a higher-income area have an inferior knowledge of language and it sets them up for the same result when they're grown. This is because the level language they hear at home is subpar and when they go to school, the schools also lack the teaching for them to receive an adequate education. They're stuck in a paradox of growing up with insufficient schooling, then unable to advance to greater educational experiences because of it.

Neuroimaging studies suggest that sign languages are complex linguistic systems processed much like spoken languages, even though they're gestural/visual, not oral. Wernicke's area activates when perceiving sign language; Broca's when producing sign language. In deaf people, lesions in left hemisphere "speech centres" like Broca's and Wernicke's areas produced significantly more sign errors on naming, repetition and sentence-comprehension tasks than signers with damaged right hemispheres.

This month, the journal Pediatrics published a study that used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study brain activity in 3-to 5-year-old children as they listened to age-appropriate stories. The researchers found differences in brain activation according to how much the children had been read to at home. Children whose parents reported more reading at home and more books in the home showed significantly greater activation of brain areas in a region of the left hemisphere called the parietal-temporal-occipital association cortex. This brain area is "a watershed region, all about multisensory integration, integrating sound and then visual stimulation," said the lead author, Dr. John S. Hutton, a clinical research fellow at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. This region of the brain is known to be very active when older children read to themselves, but Dr. Hutton notes that it also lights up when younger children are hearing stories. What was especially novel was that children who were exposed to more books and home reading showed significantly more activity in the areas of the brain that process visual association, even though the child was in the scanner just listening to a story and could not see any pictures. "When kids are hearing stories, they're imagining in their mind's eye when they hear the story," said Dr. Hutton. "For example, 'The frog jumped over the log.' I've seen a frog before, I've seen a log before, what does that look like?" The different levels of brain activation, he said, suggest that children who have more practice in developing those visual images, as they look at picture books and listen to stories, may develop skills that will help them make images and stories out of words later on. "It helps them understand what things look like, and may help them transition to books without pictures," he said. "It will help them later be better readers because they've developed that part of the brain

A Yale-led research team examined the brains of 38 couples engaged in discussion about controversial topics. For the study, the researchers from Yale and the University College of London recruited 38 adults who were asked to say whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements such as "same-sex marriage is a civil right" or "marijuana should be legalized." After matching up pairs based on their responses the researchers used an imaging technology called functional near-infrared spectroscopy to record their brain activity while they engaged in face-to-face discussions. Their findings: When two people agree, their brains exhibit a calm synchronicity of activity focused on sensory areas of the brain, such as the visual system, presumably in response to social cues from their partner. When they disagree, however, many other regions of the brain involved in higher cognitive functions become mobilized as each individual combats the other's argument. Sensory areas of the brain were less active, while activity increased in the brain's frontal lobes, home of higher order executive functions. Joy Hirsch, Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and professor of comparative medicine and neuroscience, as well as senior author of the study, said that in discord, two brains engage many emotional and cognitive resources "like a symphony orchestra playing different music." In agreement, there "is less cognitive engagement and more social interaction between brains of the talkers, similar to a musical duet."

A Liverpool University study found reading poetry lights up both the left part of the brain concerned with language, as well as the right hemisphere, an area that relates to autobiographical memory and emotion. Reading triggers "reappraisal mechanisms" that cause people to reflect on their own experiences in light of what they read. The study might also suggest that word choice and sound are crucial elements in creating beneficial literary experiences: more "challenging" prose and poetry (striking wording/phrasing, complex syntax) sparks far more electrical activity in the brain than more pedestrian translations of those passages.

(This article was by my college friend, Quinn Eastman, who's a trained scientist and science writer for Emory University.) Listening to metaphors involving arms or legs loops in a region of the brain responsible for visual perception of those body parts, scientists have discovered. The finding, recently published in Brain & Language, is another example of how neuroscience studies are providing evidence for "grounded cognition" - the idea that comprehension of abstract concepts in the brain is built upon concrete experiences, a proposal whose history extends back millennia to Aristotle. When study participants heard sentences that included phrases such as "shoulder responsibility," "foot the bill" or "twist my arm", they tended to engage a region of the brain called the left extrastriate body area or EBA. The same level of activation was not seen when participants heard literal sentences containing phrases with a similar meaning, such as "take responsibility" or "pay the bill." The study included 12 right-handed, English-speaking people, and blood flow in their brains was monitored by functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). "The EBA is part of the extrastriate visual cortex, and it was known to be involved in identifying body parts," says senior author Krish Sathian, MD, PhD, professor of neurology, rehabilitation medicine, and psychology at Emory University. "We found that the metaphor selectivity of the EBA matches its visual selectivity." The EBA was not activated when study participants heard literal, non-metaphorical sentences describing body parts. "This suggests that deep semantic processing is needed to recruit the EBA, over and above routine use of the words for body parts," Sathian says. Sathian's research team had previously observed that metaphors involving the sense of touch, such as "a rough day", activate a region of the brain important for sensing texture. In addition, other researchers have shown t

Our brains are set up to do two things at once, but not three, a French team reports in the journal Science. Their experiment examined an area of the brain involved in goals and rewards and tested people's abilities to accomplish up to three mental tasks at the same time. When volunteers were doing just one task, there was activity in goal-oriented areas of both frontal lobes, suggesting that the two sides of the brain were working together to get the job done. But when people took on a second task, the lobes divided their responsibilities. Since the brain has only two frontal lobes, researchers surmised there might be a limit to the number of goals and rewards it can handle. Indeed, when people started a third task, one of the original goals disappeared from their brains. Also people slowed down and made many more mistakes.

"Experienced meditators seem to be able switch off areas of the brain associated with daydreaming as well as psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia ... Less day dreaming has been associated with increased happiness levels ... experienced meditators had decreased activity in areas of the brain called the default mode network, which has been implicated in lapses of attention and disorders such as anxiety, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, and even the buildup of beta amyloid plaques in Alzheimer's disease."