A person who speaks a language regularly will use an average of 30,000 words.How do we manage to learn them, associate them and manage to communicate with others?A recent study has just shown that language learning depends on the connection between regions of the left hemisphere of thebrain.
To carry out the study, the scientists analyzed with magnetic resonance imaging how the learning of new words affected 27 healthy volunteers. They made them listen to exactly nine words without any real meaning but with structures similar to words in Spanish. Between word and word, a 25 millisecond pause was left, imperceptible but sufficient to aid learning. These words were repeated randomly a total of 42 times. After the learning phase, the volunteers had to identify the words they had previously heard.
As researchers have been able to verifythe key to language learning is found in the arched fascicle of the brain, a bundle of nerve fibers that connects the auditory regions of the temporal lobe with the motor region located in the frontal lobe, in the left hemisphere of the brain. Thus, the differences of each person in the development of connections in this area of our thinking organ conditions the ability to learn new words.
According to one of the study’s authors, Diana López-Barroso, the research provides new data on the unique ability of human beings to learn a language, since there are different models of connection between these brain regions in other species.
The study has been developed by researchers from the Brain Cognition and Plasticity group of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and the University of Barcelona, with the collaboration of researchers from King’s College London and has been published in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
