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"The portion of the brain responsible for visual reading doesn't require vision at all, according to a new study... Brain imaging studies of blind people as they read words in Braille show activity in precisely the same part of the brain that lights up when sighted readers read."

Difficulty of capturing micro-expressions

This review considers speaking in a second language from the perspective of motor-sensory control. Previous studies relating brain function to the prior acquisition of two or more languages (neurobilingualism) have investigated the differential demands made on linguistic representations and processes, and the role of domain-general cognitive control systems when speakers switch between languages.

In a 2011 survey, Renee Engeln, Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University and a colleague found that more than 90 percent of college women reported engaging in fat talk - despite the fact that only 9 percent were actually overweight. In another, 2014 survey, she canvassed thousands of women ranging in age from 16 to 70. Contrary to the stereotype of fat talk as a young woman's practice, she found that fat talk was common across all ages and all body sizes of women. Engeln notes that fat talk is not a harmless social-bonding ritual. According to an analysis of several studies published in 2012 in the Psychology of Women Quarterly, fat talk was linked with body shame, body dissatisfaction and eating-disordered behavior. Engeln also found that fat talk was contagious. She ran an 2012 experiment where young women, "confederates" secretly working for the researchers, joined two other young women seated at a table to discuss magazine advertisements. The ads started out innocently enough. One was for an electronics store. Another was for a water purifier. But the third was a typical fashion ad showing a model in a bikini. In the control condition, confederates commented on the visuals in the background of the fashion ad, but avoided any mention of the model or her appearance. In the "fat talk" condition, the two confederates (neither of whom was overweight) commented on the model. One said: "Look at her thighs. Makes me feel so fat." The other responded: "Me, too. Makes me wish my stomach was anywhere near flat like that." Then it was our subjects' turn. In the control condition, when neither of our confederates engaged in fat talk, none of our subjects fat talked. But when our confederates engaged in fat talk, almost a third of the subjects joined in. These subjects also reported higher levels of body dissatisfaction and shame at the end of the study than did their counterparts in the control condition.

For those of you like me - the grammatically challenged - function words are the smallish words that tie our sentences together. The. This. Though. I. And. An. There. That. "Function words are essentially the filler words," Pennebaker says. "These are the words that we don't pay attention to, and they're the ones that are so interesting." According to the way that Pennebaker organizes language, the words that we more often focus on in conversation are content words, words like "school," "family," "live," "friends" - words that conjure a specific image and relay more of the substance of what is being discussed.

Reaching for the right words (Image: Jean-Luc Chapin/Agence VU/Camera Press) LAST month, a New York court ruled that Hercules and Leo, two research chimps at Stony Brook University, had no right to legal personhood. But the fact that such a case made it through the courts at all shows our new willingness to consider the issue of personhood for other species.

This report studies 65 political influencers belonging to the Alternative Influence Network (AIN): an assortment of scholars, media pundits, and internet celebrities who use YouTube to promote a range of political positions, from mainstream versions of libertarianism and conservatism, all the way to overt white nationalism. AIN's savvy use of YouTube promotes radicalization and adoption of extremist political viewpoints. Content creators in the AIN claim to provide an alternative media source for news and political commentary. They function as political influencers who adopt the techniques of brand influencers to build audiences and "sell" them on far-right ideology. This report presents data from approximately 65 political influencers across 81 channels. These groups uphold a broader "reactionary" position: a general opposition to feminism, social justice, or left-wing politics. Members of the AIN cast themselves as an alternative media system by: * Establishing an alternative sense of credibility based on relatability, authenticity, and accountability. * Cultivating an alternative social identity using the image of a social underdog, and countercultural appeal. Members of the AIN use the proven engagement techniques of brand influencers to spread ideological content: * Ideological Testimonials * Political Self-Branding * Search Engine Optimization * Strategic Controversy

In one of the most viral Twitter stories of 2018, people listened to the same acoustically-degraded audio clip of a word, and hotly debated which was the correct word: laurel or yanny. What's the reason for the diametrically-opposed discrepancy? The poor quality of the audio, likely re-recorded multiple times, makes it more open to interpretation by the brain, says Brad Story, a professor of speech, language and hearing sciences at the University of Arizona. Primary information that would be present in a high-quality recording or in person is "weakened or attenuated," Story says, even as the brain is eagerly looking for patterns to interpret. "And if you throw things off a little bit, in terms of it being somewhat unnatural, then it is possible to fool that perceptual system and our interpretation of it," says Story. Story says the two words have similar patterns that easily could be confused. He carried out his own experiment by analyzing a waveform image of the viral recording and compared it to recordings of himself saying "laurel" and "yanny." He noticed similarities in the features of these words, which you can see below. Both words share a U-shaped pattern, though they correspond to different sets of frequencies that the vocal tract produces, Story explains. Britt Yazel, a neuroscience post-doctoral student at UC Davis, also provides more reasons for why people are hearing different things. Some people have greater sensitivity to higher frequencies or lower frequencies, Yazel says. "But not only that, the brains themselves can be wired very differently to interpret speech," he says. For example, if you hear the sounds in either "yanny" or "laurel" more in your everyday life, you might be more likely to hear them here. In other words, your brain may be primed and predisposed to hearing certain sounds, due to environmental exposure.

What does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? Here are the main 6 findings: 1. Attention: "[Bilinguals] can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another," says Sorace. Do these same advantages accrue to a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don't yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn't begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood. 2. Empathy: bilingual children as young as age 3, because they must follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting, have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind - both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills. 3. Reading (English): students enrolled in dual-language programs outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school year's worth of learning by the end of middle school. 4. School performance and engagement: compared with students in English-only classrooms or in one-way immersion, dual-language students have somewhat higher test scores and also seem to be happier in school. Attendance is better, behavioral problems fewer, parent involvement higher. 5. Diversity and integration: Because dual-language schools are composed of native English speakers deliberately placed together with recent immigrants, they tend to be more ethnically and socioeconomically balanced. And there is some evidence that this helps kids of all backgrounds gain comfort with diversity and different cultures. 6. Protection against cognitive decline and dementia: actively using two languages seems to have a protective effect against age-related demen

In this article addressed to teachers, author Julia Csillag cites research on the use of wordless texts to teach students with autism spectrum disorder. Wordless texts can be used to address a variety of skills that autistic students typically struggle with, including diverse literacy skills, cognitive flexibility, and nonverbal communication. Removing words and auditory information also supports autistic students since integrating information from multiple senses can take longer in autistic individuals, particularly if this information is linguistic. Removing words can therefore positively influence processing. Using wordless books or movies can build diverse literacy skills in terms of making inferences, understanding narrative structure, and using evidence to support a claim. All wordless "texts" support individuals' ability to make inferences, which is helpful since research shows that "students with Asperger syndrome…had challenges in making inferences from the text" (Knight & Sartrini, 2014). Moreover, researchers have found that "similar processes contribute to comprehension of narratives across different media" (Kendeou, P. et al, 2009), meaning that addressing visual inferences can transfer to inferences made during reading. Images and silent books or movies necessarily require students to infer what is happening, who the characters are, etc.

While noted psychologist Gottman's 3 Skills and 1 Rule were originally intended for couples, they apply equally to any close relationship and could create better, more effective communication. In a nutshell, here they are: Here are Dr. Gottman's three skills and one rule for crucial conversation: The rule: Understanding must precede advice. The goal of an intimate conversation is only to understand, not to problem-solve. Premature problem solving tends to shut people down. Problem solving and advice should only begin when both people feel totally understood. Skill #1: Putting Your Feelings into Words The first skill is being able to put one's feelings into words. This skill was called "focusing" by master clinician Eugene Gendlin. Gendlin said that when we are able to find the right images, phrases, metaphors, and words to fit our feelings, there is a kind of "resolution" one feels on one's body, an easing of tension. Focusing makes our conversations about feelings much deeper and more intimate, because the words reveal who we are. Skill #2: Asking Open-Ended Questions The second skill of intimate conversations is helping one's conversational partner explore his or her feelings by asking open-ended questions. This is done by either asking targeted questions, like, "What is your disaster scenario here?" or making specific statements that explore feelings like, "Tell me the story of that! Skill #3: Expressing Empathy The third skill is empathy, or validation. Empathy isn't easy. In an intimate conversation, the first two skills help us sense and explore another person's thoughts, feelings, and needs. Empathy is shown by communication that these thoughts, feelings, and needs make sense to you. That you understand why the other person's experience. That does not mean that you necessarily agree with this person. You might, for example, have an entirely different memory or interpretation of events. Empathy means communicating that, given

Research from Concordia University in Montreal reveals a new perk visible in the problem-solving skills of bilingual toddlers. The study assessed the vocabularies of 39 bilingual children and 43 monolinguals when they were aged 24 months, and then again at 31 months. During the second assessment, the researchers also had the young participants perform a battery of tasks to test their cognitive flexibility and memory skills. While overall, there was little difference between the bilingual and monolingual toddlers, bilingual children performed significantly better on the conflict inhibition tasks than did their monolingual counterparts. Conflict inhibition refers to the mental process of overriding a well-learned rule that you would normally pay attention to. These were the two tasks: 1. Reverse categorization -- participants were told to put a set of little blocks into a little bucket and big blocks into a big bucket. Then the instructions were switched -- big blocks in the little bucket and little blocks in the big bucket. 2. Shape conflict -- participants were shown pictures of different sized fruit and asked to name them. Then a new series of images was shown, with a small fruit embedded inside a large one. Toddlers were asked to point to the little fruit. Crivello, one of the lead researchers, commented that "Language switching underlies the bilingual advantage on conflict tasks. In conflict inhibition, the child has to ignore certain information -- the size of a block relative to a bucket, or the fact that one fruit is inside another. That mirrors the experience of having to switch between languages, using a second language, even though the word from a first language might be more easily accessible."

Recognition of subtle emotional cues may be developmental, according to neurological research. At the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., Deborah Yurgelun-Todd and a group of researchers have studied how adolescents perceive emotion as compared to adults. The scientists looked at the brains of 18 children between the ages of 10 and 18 and compared them to 16 adults using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Both groups were shown pictures of adult faces and asked to identify the emotion on the faces. Using fMRI, the researchers could trace what part of the brain responded as subjects were asked to identify the expression depicted in the picture. The results surprised the researchers. The adults correctly identified the expression as fear. Yet the teens answered "shocked, surprised, angry." Moreover, teens and adults used different parts of their brains to process what they were feeling. The teens mostly used the amygdala, a small almond shaped region that guides instinctual or "gut" reactions, while the adults relied on the frontal cortex, which governs reason and planning. As the teens got older, however, the center of activity shifted more toward the frontal cortex and away from the cruder response of the amygdala. Yurgelun-Todd, director of neuropsychology and cognitive neuroimaging at McLean Hospital believes the study goes partway to understanding why the teenage years seem so emotionally turbulent. The teens seemed not only to be misreading the feelings on the adult's face, but they reacted strongly from an area deep inside the brain. The frontal cortex helped the adults distinguish fear from shock or surprise. Often called the executive or CEO of the brain, the frontal cortex gives adults the ability to distinguish a subtlety of expression: "Was this really fear or was it surprise or shock?" For the teens, this area wasn't fully operating.

For the study, conducted by Dr. John Hutton, a researcher and pediatrician at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and someone with an interest in emergent literacy, 27 children around age 4 went into an FMRI machine. They were presented with the same story in three conditions: audio only; the illustrated pages of a storybook with an audio voiceover; and an animated cartoon. While the children paid attention to the stories, the MRI, the machine scanned for activation within certain brain networks, and connectivity between the networks. Here's what researchers found: In the audio-only condition (too cold): language networks were activated, but there was less connectivity overall. "There was more evidence the children were straining to understand." In the animation condition (too hot): there was a lot of activity in the audio and visual perception networks, but not a lot of connectivity among the various brain networks. "The language network was working to keep up with the story," says Hutton. "Our interpretation was that the animation was doing all the work for the child. They were expending the most energy just figuring out what it means." The children's comprehension of the story was the worst in this condition. The illustration condition was what Hutton called "just right".When children could see illustrations, language-network activity dropped a bit compared to the audio condition. Instead of only paying attention to the words, Hutton says, the children's understanding of the story was "scaffolded" by having the images as clues. Most importantly, in the illustrated book condition, researchers saw increased connectivity between - and among - all the networks they were looking at: visual perception, imagery, default mode and language. One interesting note is that, because of the constraints of an MRI machine, which encloses and immobilizes your body, the story-with-illustrations condition wasn't actually as good as reading on Mom or Dad's lap. The emotional bon

This story takes a look at other papers on JSTOR to outline how politicians can deploy metaphors, vocabulary, and rhetorical devices to frame the debate and sway voters and listeners. This is the first of a two part article. It describes, specifically, the similarities between political rhetoric and advertising techniques deployed by companies. In both instances, those using language are seeking to present a certain image of themselves.

The brain's language regions work together as a co-ordinated network, with some parts involved in multiple functions and a level of redundancy in some processing pathways. So it's not simply a matter of one brain region doing one thing in isolation. Brain-imaging methods have revealed that much more of our brain is involved in language processing than previously thought. Thanks to fMRI technology, we now know that numerous regions in every major lobe (frontal, parietal, occipital and temporal lobes; and the cerebellum, an area at the bottom of the brain) are involved in our ability to produce and comprehend language.

The German poet Christian Morgenstern once said that "all seagulls look as though their name were Emma." Though Morgenstern was known for his nonsense poetry, there was truth in his suggestion that some linguistic labels are perfectly suited to the concepts they denote. Similar to what we've learned about metaphors, labels and names influence how we think and behave. Studies suggest as soon as you label a concept, you change how people perceive it (aka the Heisenberg principle.) Words evoke images such as 'bouba' and 'kiki' from James Geary's TedTalk, directional concepts such as are "north" with up and "south" with down, and simplicity of pronunciation and spelling all affects how one perceives another.

Thought-provoking video reminding us how much our and other people's online presence is not truth/reality, but the act of "framing"--presenting a particular, curated, portrait of yourself that you desire others to see, whether in images or words.