Brain Research

As we all know, the brain is a complex organ that controls the functions of our bodies as well as our thoughts. Many studies have been done to see just how the brain works. But with the brain being so complex there is only so much we can learn. One of the many topics of research studies on the brain is that of the effects of foreign languages in children. This post will be dedicated to giving facts that were found out through brain studies and facts about the brain.


Facts about the brain:
1. When a child is born, they have over 100 billion neurons (brain cells), this is enough to last a lifetime due to there won't be anymore neurons developed after birth. Neurons form synapses, connections, which create the wiring of the brain.

2. When an infant is eight months old they can have 1,000 trillion synapses. Yet by age ten the synapse count decreases to around 500 trillion. The number of synapses is determined by the child's early experiences and learning. The number of synapses is likely to decrease by as much as 25 percent. 

3. If a child doesn't use specific connections or pathways in the brain, they will be lost. This is why people often say "use it or lose it" about the brain. The connections that are used, however, can become stronger due to the brain discarding inactive connections.




4. When an infant is three months old, his brain is capable of distinguishing several hundred different spoken sounds. The brain will organize itself, over the next few months, more efficiently so that it will only recognize the sounds that are part of the language that they regularly hear. The brain is able to retain the ability to relearn sounds it has discarded, during early childhood, so young children typically learn new languages easily.

Some Finds on Foreign Languages and Young Children:
1. Researchers use functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the changes in blood flow of bilingual children and adults while having them name objects or describe events in different languages. People whom become bilingual at an early age use the same synapses for both languages, while those who learned a second language later on in life will use a different segment of the brain for the second language. A child's brain will be able to use synapses that will no longer be accessible later on in life.  

2.  The brain changes structurally in those of bilingual people. A bilingual person's brain will have denser grey matter than that of a monolinguals'. The left side of the brain that controls language will have the most pronounced change, as well as some change can be seen in the right hemisphere. The change will be more obvious the earlier the second language is learned. 

3. A child's brain have tremendous plasticity, this means that they are really flexible when it comes to adapting to new requirements, such as new grammar and sound perceptions.Infants are able to perceive sounds differently than adults.  

4. Bilinguals are better at multitasking than monolinguals are due to the brain being trained to attend to the meaning of the words and concept of one language, while suppressing the meaning of the other. Studies found that bilingual elderly people show a lower incidence of cognitive decline than that of their monolingual counterparts.