In the Swedish Academy of young
translators, new recruits study a crash course in complex languages. It
is not only about military discipline: specialists discovered that
intensive study of foreign tongues stimulates the growth of the
hippocampus and causes changes in other structures of the brain.
Learning languages also helps in preventing Alzheimer's disease.
In the Swedish Academy, young people are
offered to study Arabic, Russian or Dari (the language of the Afghan
Tajiks) in 13 months. Newcomers had to learn the language all day long,
every day, at a very intense pace. Their hard work gave unexpectedly
impressive results. The experiment showed that it was not just active
intellectual activity, but the study of foreign tongues. Researchers
used a group of students of the Medical University of Umeå to control
the research. Medics are known for their extensive studies, but the
subject of their studies has nothing in common with foreign languages.
Both groups took MRI tests before the experiment and after three months
of active studies.
The results were surprising: the
structure of the brain of the control group remained unchanged, but the
students, who studied a foreign language, had certain parts of their
brain increased in size. In particular, the researchers found the
"growth" of the hippocampus - the deep structure of the brain
responsible for the development of new knowledge, orientation in space
and the consolidation of short-term memory into long-term memory.
"We were surprised that different parts
of the brain developed to different degrees depending on how well the
students performed and how much effort they had had to put in to keep up
with the course," Johan Martensson, a researcher in psychology at Lund
University in Sweden, said in a university news release.
The group of translator students also
showed changes in three areas of the cerebral cortex. The students who
showed a bigger growth of the hippocampus and the superior temporal
gyrus, had better language skills than other students. Most diligent
students also showed the growth in the middle frontal gyrus.
Scientists say that foreign language
studies show almost a miraculous effect on the brain. The fact is that
the studies of unfamiliar tongues and writings make the brain work as
hard as it can. For example, in 2010, Israeli researchers found that
reading in Arabic has the two hemispheres of the brain involved in the
process. Reading in English or Hebrew does not give this effect,
although the latter belongs to Semitic languages.
Interestingly, the Arabic language shows
such an influence only on the brains of those people who study this
language: children who just learn to write and foreigners studying
Arabic in adulthood. Adult native speakers have only the right
hemisphere involved in the reading process.
In 2004, neuroscientists at University
College London, with the help of magnetic resonance imaging examined 105
people, 25 of whom knew only the English language, 25 was knew not only
English, but another European language, 33 were bilingual (they knew a
second language since childhood), and 22 came from other European
countries and knew not only their native language, but also English (as a
foreign one).
The scientists discovered that all test
people, who knew two languages, had increased density of the cerebral
cortex in the lower part of the parietal lobe. Those changes were most
intense with the participants who spoke two languages from childhood.
"It means that older learners won't be
as fluent as people who learned earlier in life. They won't be as good
as early bilinguals who learned, for example, before the age of five or
before the age of 10," Lead researcher Andrea Mechelli, of the
Institute of Neurology at UCL, said.
However, despite this scientific conclusion, language learning in adulthood and even in old age can do a lot of good.
American researchers say that employees
who know a foreign language can cope with mental tasks better than those
who speak only their native language. Bilingual people focus on
relevant information better and ignore irrelevant information, and
therefore perform better in tests of intellectual abilities and better
achievements at work. For example, those who know additional languages
can effectively prioritize and work on more than one project at a time
successfully.
"The main advantage of cognitive
bilingual people is the ability to engage in several cases at the same
time," researchers explain. The need to switch between two languages
enables bilingual people to constantly train their brain. This
exercise is not accessible to those who speak only one language.
Yana Filimonova
19/11/12
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