Tag: brain

Posted in Article

New Discoveries from the Bilingual Brain and Mind across the Life Span: Implications for Education

Posted on by jannetteaguilera

The research article “New Discoveries from the Bilingual Brain and Main across the Life Span” by Laura-Ann Petitto was published in 2009. The article discusses neuroscience research with the goal to see if there are sensitive periods in the human development of language and reading and to understand the development and functions of brain tissue. The new field of educational neuroscience has emerged that allows us to analyze educational problems. This study shows how language research in educational neuroscience can help with educational policy and practice. Multiple studies were performed in this article. The first finding was that introducing a new language did not “damage” or “contaminate” the language first taught at home. The second finding was that bilingual babies have an “increased sensitivity to a greater range of phonetic contrasts, and extended developmental window of sensitive for perceiving these phonetic contrasts relative to monolingual children” (5). Another finding include that bilinguals who learned two languages by the age of, process the languages very similar to monolingual individuals. Bilinguals who learned a second language later “exhibit more bilateral activation, recruits more distributed frontal lobe tissue (including working memory and inhibitory areas) and recently exhibit more cognitive effort” (7).

This source is very useful in determining how the bilingual brain is different from the monolingual brain. It also shares how factors such as the age of language acquisition factors into how the brain is developed. These are essential to my guiding questions regarding the development of the bilingual brain. 

Article Source:
Petitto, L.-A. (2009). New Discoveries from the Bilingual Brain and Mind across the Life Span: Implications for Education. Mind, Brain, and Education, 3(4), 185–197. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ862467&site=eds-live
Posted in Video

Bilingual and Monolingual Baby Brains Differ in Response to Language

Posted on by jannetteaguilera

This video shows a study between bilingual and monolingual babies in regards to brain activity. Eleven month old babies would hear the sounds of both Spanish and English. Bilingual babies (from bilingual families) would respond to both Spanish and English sounds while Monolingual babies (who only have heard English) only respond to English sounds. Thus the infant brain of eleven months specializes in language(s) being practiced around them. Also, bilinguals showed stronger responses in the prefrontal and orbitofrontal Cortex which are associated with executive function skills and are known to activate when bilingual adults switch between two languages. Thus babies are already practice switching between to languages.

Youtube Video

This study shows how the bilingual brain is different to that of the monolingual brain in terms of activity when engaged in specific sounds. As such, it helps answer my question as to how the bilingual brain is developed. 

Video Source:
I-LABS Tech Support. (2016, March 22). Bilingual and monolingual baby brains differ in response to language [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?time_continue=160&v=TAYhj-gekqw
Posted in Website

The Advantages of a Bilingual Brain

Posted on by jannetteaguilera

The website article called “The Advantages of a Bilingual Brain” by Laura Chaparro on April 26, 2018 talks about the positive impact that bilingualism has on individuals. Being bilingual is tied to delaying symptoms of dementia, better recovery after a stroke, better memory and attention skills, better working memory skills compared to monolinguals and the better executive functions like working with others and conflict resolution. In a study that examines micromanaging and behavioral studies on adulthood bilingualism found that “two languages protects against cognitive deterioration by improving the cognitive reserve.” Dementia is delayed by about four years as bilingualism keeps our minds and brains healthy. As for stroke recovery, 608 patients were analyzed by the Institute of Medical Sciences of Nizam (India). Of those, “40.5% of bilinguals recovered normal cognition, compared to 19.6% of monolinguals.” Regarding the brain, eleven month babies where studied at the University of Washington. They looked at babies of bilingual and monolingual families. They found that ” The prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices (two areas of the frontal lobe) had more intense responses in bilingual babies compared to those who only heard and spoke one language. ” Also, bilingual individuals show denser grey matter on the “left interior parietal regions of the cerebral cortex” and white matter better maintained during aging. What is most interesting is the following: “Overall, bilinguals have developed different brain regions to perform tasks than the ones used by monolinguals,” Bialystok sums up. We still don’t know how these changes allow an improvement in performance and cognitive reserve for those who can speak two languages.

I chose this article as it answers my guiding question regarding the advantages of the bilingual brain. We see a delay in dementia, as well as an improvement in cognitive skills when compared to monolinguals. We also add on to the development of the bilingual brain because we now know that different regions are developed in the brains of bilinguals.

Image from the website
Image from the website
Chaparro, L. (2018, April 26). The advantages of a bilingual brain. Retrieved July 6, 2019, from OpenMind website: https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/research/the-advantages-of-a-bilingual-brain/
Posted in Experiential

The Bilingual Brain by Arturo E. Hernandez by University of Houston System (Coursera) – Week 1

Posted on by jannetteaguilera

I took a free online class called “The bilingual Brain” on Coursera. Below are my notes on Lessons from week 1.

Office hours: Q&A of Instructor; A question was conducted on personality switching that occurs with language switching. Dr. Hernandez explains that different personalities come out depending on the context, not language specifically. For example, you be shy with many people around while outgoing with a friend. Personality can switch when you go home (relating to native language) to going to school (with a second language). Also, the first language is more tied to emotion. Different responses in bad words (stronger feeling in a native language). He also discusses how language impairments are apparent in any language, which does not depend on how many languages a child learns. He states: “Language impairment, to some extent, is independent of any particular language” Lastly, parents regret not maintaining the home language, and parents regret not being taught the native language. Kids can blend languages and eventually sort out the language. Parents must determine what the language outcome should be. Pushing for the native language is more work since the societal language is a stronger influence.

1.1 How are two languages coded in one brain? A guy (Arturo) spoke Italian (native language) and learned French and English as a young man. He suffered from hemiplegic stroke which caused a speech disturbance and could never recover French and English.

1.2 Jean Albert Pitres (doctor) defined familiarity as “the language that would be most resistant to damage would be the language that the patient was speaking at the time of the stroke.” He talks about how well you speak it plays a role.

1.3 Theador Ribot developed the theory “law of regression: memories learned in early life are organic.” He studied patients with dementia, more complex memories were forgotten, then the meaning of words, single words and then gestures. He had several bilingual patients, and he learned that earlier learned things are resistant to damage. For example, a forester who grew up in Poland and then moved to Germany, spoke German the rest of his life had gone through anesthesia for a surgical procedure. He then spoke Polish even though he had not spoken it in 30 years. In 1999, Franco Fabbro (in his book Neurolinguistics of Bilingualism) conducted research of many cases in the last 100 years with bilinguals who had brain damage and found that a third recovered their first language the fastest, a third their second language the fastest and a third both languages the same. Maybe it does not depend on language… So Patient A.S. spoke Farsi and learned German in college and conducted research in English. He would alternate between Farsi and German (without mixing the languages). After he fully recovered the two languages, he was able to recover English. Dr. Hernernadez was learning Portuguese in Brazil and had trouble speaking his Spanish and English native languages while doing so. Then the idea of control came up that could be called the language switch.

1.4 Otto Poetrzl introduced the language switch “a neurological mechanism that allows a speaker to remain in one language and switch to another.” Thus we can get stuck in a language, we can struggle with the idea to get out of a language by turning on a language and turning the other off. For example, there was a Czech native speaker who learned German at 14. He could understand both but can only speak Czech.

1.5 Three topics: Age of Acquisition – Law of regression, Proficiency – Familiarity, Control- Fixation. Metaphors of the mind: A computer (information possessor, like a machine), Linguistics (different language functions (sounds, words, letters, sentences) are broken by different types of damage), location (language is in different parts of the brain). Final thoughts: language is not one thing (complex, many layers, ex: sounds, letters, sentences, larger pieces of language), Language develops over time (many layers)

1.6 Bilingual Metaphor: Conflict between two languages, new languages, biological (two species coexisting in an ecosystem). Coexist, share resources.

This course is essential to answering my questions on the development of the bilingual brain and the advantages of the bilingual brain. In week 1 he lays out the foundations of the research on the bilingual brain and introduces the topics explored in the next coming lessons. We already see that studying the impact languages have on the brain is very complex.

Course Source:
Hernandez, A. E. (2019). Week 1 [Lecture transcript]. Retrieved July 6, 2019, from Cousera website: https://www.coursera.org/learn/bilingual/home/week/1
Posted in Website

Understanding the Bilingual Brain

Posted on by jannetteaguilera

The website article “Understanding the bilingual brain” is published on Psychology Today by Francios Grasjean Ph.D on September 19, 2014. This article describes the neural bases of bilingualism. First Aurturo Hernandez is introduced who is professor at the University of Houston who ” works on the underpinnings of bilingual language processing as well as second language acquisition in children and adults.” He grew up as a bilingual who spoke English and Spanish, as well as two other languages he learned later in his life. in 2013, he published a book called The bilingual Brain and answers some questions regarding his work. He asked about the latest and most interesting findings in the field and he says that “that the differences in language experience can lead to clear neuroanatomical differences.” He also describes how two languages can co-exist together peacefully and share resources; however, they compete. Meaning that knowing one language can help another language yet can mean different things too. For example, he describes his Spanish speaking friend who accidentally frightens a waitress to be careful “because he was vicious.” In Spanish, this would be that he is addictive while in English it means that he has vices. While the word is similar it can be confusing when they in fact are different. Then he tells us how stress can lead to a loss of one language but not of another. This happens due to memory being set up to remember what we need thus “languages are set to be remembered when we need them.” Also, the language that is less affected by stress is the dominant language since it has “stronger interconnections with our knowledge.” Also, the two factors that cause one language to be privileged in the bilingual brain include the proficiency of the language and the age the language was acquired.

He then goes on to discuss language mixing. A metaphor tells of a “language switch” where areas in the “prefrontal cortex, the parietal lobe and/or the basal ganglia are involved.” The issue is that usually it is very easy to switch languages which the author believes is due to external cues that trigger each language and how the brain can quickly adapt to these different cues with the appropriate response. Also, the field of cognitive neuroscience has moved away from thinking where languages are stored in the brain to how the brain, mind and human body interact (a more systems-oriented approach). In the past, mind sciences was based on the thought that the mind was like a computer. The author believes that humans are more than that, “our brains are connected to the body and as such we function as an organism.” Lastly, he thinks that we must start answering questions stated in the late 19th century such as : “How do age of acquisition, language proficiency and language control help to shape the bilingual brain ?” He wants to move away from “thinking about areas of the brain, we could start to think about cognition as a series of brain states that come and go like waves near the shore. “

This article is useful for my guiding questions as it describes how two languages interact and how and why one can be privileged than the other. This shows current research, which moves away from old approaches to understanding of the bilingual brain as a computer to one that focuses on factors that shape and interact with the bilingual brain.

  • Person being interviewed
  • The book of the person interviewed in this article
  • Author of the Article
Article Source:
Grosjean, F., Ph.D. (2014, September 19). Understanding the bilingual brain. Retrieved June 27,  2019, from Psychology Today website: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-bilingual/201409/understanding-the-bilingual-brain  
Book Mentioned in Article:
Hernandez, Arturo E. (2013). The Bilingual Brain. New York: Oxford University Press.