Language processing regions in the brain are separate from other cognitive processes like math, reasoning, and understanding other people's mental states.
Polyglots, who speak multiple languages, have a more efficient and streamlined language system.
Deep dives
Language and Thought
The relationship between language and thought has been extensively studied. Through fMRI scans, researchers have found that the brain regions involved in language processing do not work when people are doing math, solving logical problems, or thinking about other people's mental states. This finding challenges the notion that language is necessary for complex thinking. Patients with severe damage to the language system, known as global aphasia, can still perform well in tasks involving math and reasoning, further supporting the idea that language and thought are separate processes.
Mapping Language in the Brain
The language processing regions in the brain are primarily located in the left hemisphere, but there is also some activation in the right hemisphere. However, the distinction between speech and language is important. The language system is involved in understanding and producing language, regardless of the modality (spoken, written, or signed). Functional MRI (fMRI) scans allow researchers to identify these language-responsive areas and study their activity during different language tasks. EEG, another brain imaging technique, provides more detailed temporal information but lacks spatial precision.
Efficiency in Polyglots
Polyglots, individuals who speak multiple languages, have been found to have a smaller language system compared to monolinguals and bilinguals. This greater efficiency suggests that the constant practice of learning and using multiple languages may lead to a more streamlined language system. However, more research is needed to understand if this efficiency is due to training or if individuals with smaller language systems are naturally predisposed to become polyglots.
Multilingual Language Processing
Research also focuses on how individuals who speak multiple languages represent and process those languages in the brain. Preliminary findings suggest that different aspects of language, such as words, grammar, and sounds, may be processed differently in the brain, but the divisions within the language system are not clearly defined. Further investigations are necessary to determine the specific neural mechanisms involved in multilingual language processing.
Your brain is where language - and all of your other thinking - happens. In order to figure out how language fits in among all of the other things you do with your brain, we can put people in fancy brain scanning machines and then create very controlled setups where exactly one thing is different. For example, comparing looking at words versus nonwords (of the same length, on the same background) or listening to audio clips of a language you do speak vs a language you don’t speak.
In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch talks with Dr Evelina Fedorenko, an associate professor of neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA about figuring out which parts of the brain do language things! We talk about how we can use brain scans to compare language with other things your brain can do, such as solving visual puzzles, math problems, music, and inferring things about other people’s mental states, as well as comparing how the brains of multilingual people process their various languages. We also talk about the results of the fMRI language experiments that Gretchen got to be a participant in: which side is doing most of her language processing and how active her brain is for French compared to English.
For links to things mentioned in this episode, including an image of Gretchen's brain:
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