Indians, who can speak two or more languages with relative ease, have both sides of their brain’s hemispheres active.
WASHINGTON: Neuroscientists at Dartmouth University in New Hampshire have found why several people around the world such as Indians and Hispanics can process two or more languages at once. The study was presented at the prestigious Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday.
Using an advanced optical imaging technology called Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) four researchers from Dartmouth said they found that people who can speak several languages at once leave a “bilingual signature” because of specific increased activity in the part of the brain called Broca’s area.
In fact, people with bilingual and multilingual ability had both the left and right hemispheres of Broca’s area, while people with the ability to speak with just one language had only the left hemisphere of Broca’s area active.
Laura-Ann Petitto, the study’s lead author and the John Wentworth Endowed Chair in Psychological & Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College, said: “Bilinguals appear to engage more of the neural landscape available for language processing than monolinguals, which is very good.”
This would mean that most Indians, especially those in urban and semi-urban areas who can speak two or more languages with relative ease, have both sides of their brain’s hemispheres active. According to Government of India statistics, India is home to 23 official languages and 1652 dialects. Most government correspondence is done in both Hindi and English.
Petitto said: “For decades, people have wondered whether the brains of bilingual people are different from monolinguals. People also worry that the brains of bilingual children are somehow negatively impacted by early experience with two languages. The present findings are significant.”
The team proposes that bilingual language processing provides a new window into the extent of what nature’s neural architecture for language processing could be, if only we used it. Petitto added, “The irony is that we may find it is the monolingual that is not taking full advantage of the neural landscape for language and cognitive processing than nature could have potentially made available.”
She said that this research advances the path for using NIRS brain imaging technology both to understand the neural underpinnings of all human language and especially to discover the secrets of the bilingual brain.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}