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An infant's mother tongue creates neural patterns that the unconscious brain retains years later, even if the child totally stops using the language, (as can happen in cases of international adoption) according to a new joint study by scientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital. The study offers the first neural evidence that traces of the "lost" language remain in the brain and suggests that early-acquired information is not only maintained in the brain, but unconsciously influences brain processing for years, perhaps for life -- potentially indicating a special status for information acquired during optimal periods of development. This could counter arguments not only within the field of language acquisition, but across domains, that neural representations are overwritten or lost from the brain over time.

This article talks about how music could actually increase productivity. It states that everyone listens to music, whether it be while driving, or doing work, studying, or even reading. It talks about how there two attention systems, one for the conscious and one for the unconscious and how the music falls into the unconscious. Also the study showed that the type of music mattered more towards productivity outcome.

Not everyone who speaks English is treated the same way. What happens when accent discrimination creeps in to our conscious and unconscious - and what do we do about our biases?

This article talks about how and why words in the English language are changing. For example, people now use "double check" when they really mean they will just "check". "Whelm" used to mean what "overwhelm" does now. Humans have done this over many years because it is in human nature to unconsciously give words extra strength. This article also analyzes some writers that are stuck behind the "train moving forward" that is the English language. The author of the article wonders if these writers will be able to keep up as years go on.

Bicultural people may unconsciously change their personality when they switch languages, according to a US study on bilingual Hispanic women. It found that women who were actively involved in both English and Spanish speaking cultures interpreted the same events differently, depending on which language they speaking during that particular event.

What our speech reveals about us

Why are people so frequently betrayed by their mouths? Scientists and psychologists have different theories about this special breed of mortification. People say between two and six words per second, which affords plenty of room for mistakes. For Dr. Geoff Goodman, a psychoanalyst in New York and professor at Long Island University, using the wrong word or name "reveals a secret desire forbidden by society or one's self." Before the mind goes into censor mode, the unconscious, hidden thoughts can spill out.

How do humans construct their mental representations of the passage of time? The universalist account claims that abstract concepts like time are universal across humans. In contrast, the linguistic relativity hypothesis holds that speakers of different languages represent duration differently. A 2017 study conducted by Panos Athanasopoulos, Professor of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, and felllow linguist Emanuel Bylund, shows that bilinguals do indeed think about time differently, depending on the language context in which they are estimating the duration of events. Learning a new way to talk about time really does rewire the brain. Our findings are the first psycho-physical evidence of cognitive flexibility in bilinguals. It seems that by learning a new language, you suddenly become attuned to perceptual dimensions that you weren't aware of before. The fact that bilinguals go between these different ways of estimating time effortlessly and unconsciously fits in with a growing body of evidence demonstrating the ease with which language can creep into our most basic senses, including our emotions, our visual perception and now it turns out, our sense of time. But it also shows that bilinguals are more flexible thinkers and there is evidence to suggest that mentally going back and forth between different languages on a daily basis confers advantages on the ability to learn and multi-task, and even long term benefits for mental well-being.

The article examines some commonly-used colloquial terms that could be construed as racist, and the reasons behind why those terms are not innocent. Author Michael Coard asserts, "Racism is not just lynching, cross-burning, redlining, employment discrimination, educational barriers, or even malicious slurs, and those who manifest the unconscious and passive form of racism are not so easily identifiable."

A study from Lancaster University and Stockholm University, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, found that people who are bilingual think about time differently depending on the language context in which they are estimating the duration of events. our language creeps into our everyday emotions and perceptions more than we realise. "The fact that bilinguals go between these different ways of estimating time effortlessly and unconsciously fits in with a growing body of evidence demonstrating the ease with which language can creep into our most basic senses, including our emotions, visual perception, and now it turns out, sense of time," he said. Professor Athanasopoulos also suggested the results show that bilinguals are more "flexible thinkers" than those who just speak one language. "There is evidence to suggest that mentally going back and forth between different languages on a daily basis confers advantages on the ability to learn and multi-task, and even long-term benefits for mental well-being," he said.

The author, a specialist and researcher in linguistics and discourse analysis, was interested in communication between individuals from different cultures. The misunderstandings it provokes are often based on unconscious reflexes and reference points which makes them all the more damaging. Communication between humans would be very difficult, if not impossible, without discursive memory. Our memories allow us to understand each other. Gregory Charles says in a tweet after the attack at the Grand Mosque in 2017, "Every nasty word we utter joins sentences, then paragraphs, pages and manifestos and ends up killing the world." This idea is defined by specialists in discourse analysis by theconcent of interdiscoursement. Not being aware of this discursive mechanism can cause many misunderstandings. Understanding it certainly helps to communicate better. Putting yourself in your audience's place is the key to good communication.

Lera Boroditsky, then an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience, and symbolic systems at Stanford University at the time of this article, looks at how the languages we speak shape the way we think. Boroditsky's research data, collected from around the world, suggeststhat people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world. Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity. Boroditsky argues that patterns in a language can indeed play a causal role in constructing how we think - that learning a new language isn't simply learning a new way of talking, but a new way of thinking. Languages shape the way we think about space, time, colors, and objects. Other studies have found effects of language on how people construe events, reason about causality, keep track of number, understand material substance, perceive and experience emotion, reason about other people's minds, choose to take risks, and even in the way they choose professions and spouses. Taken together, these results show that linguistic processes are pervasive in most fundamental domains of thought, unconsciously shaping us from the nuts and bolts of cognition and perception to our loftiest abstract notions and major life decisions. Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives.