How Does The Brain Learn Language

In this article, we will bear witness what our brains do when nosotros listen to someone talking to us. Most particularly, nosotros will show how the brains of infants and children are tuned to empathise language, and how changes in the brain during development serve equally preconditions for language learning. Understanding linguistic communication is a process that involves at least two important brain regions, which need to work together in lodge to make information technology happen. This would be impossible without connections that permit these brain regions to substitution information. The nervus fibers that brand up these connections develop and change during infancy and childhood and provide a growing underpinning for the ability to understand and use language.

We humans are very social and chatty beings. As soon as we are born, we larn to communicate with our environment. Growing up, we love to talk to our friends, to our families, and to strangers. We exchange our thoughts and feelings and are eager to learn about the thoughts and feelings of others. This includes direct spoken statements by face up-to-face up interactions, on the telephone, or via Skype, but also written messages via mail service-information technology notes, text messages, Facebook, or Twitter. All of these types of advice require linguistic communication in lodge to ship a message from 1 person to the other. Linguistic communication is used by young children from a very early historic period on, and their language abilities develop apace. But how exercise humans acquire to sympathize language, and what are the first steps in language acquisition? How does linguistic communication develop from a baby to a child and and so on? Are there certain preconditions in our brains that support language? And, nearly importantly, why is language of import? Well, the ability to understand and produce language is a huge reward for us because it allows us to substitution information very quickly and accurately. It even allows u.s.a. to pass on this information over centuries, when nosotros write it downwardly and preserve it. The bible, for instance, contains texts that were written many hundreds of years ago, and we tin still read it. When we talk, we can talk nigh things that are right in front of us, or about things that are far away, things that be, have existed or will exist, or even things that never existed in the real world and will never be. We can even talk about talking itself, or write articles that effort to teach the states how this tremendous ability is fabricated possible by our brains. Because this is the place where our words come from when we speak, and also where they get to when someone else talks to us. The language ability is 1 of the most amazing abilities that we have.

When babies are born, they cannot talk or understand words. A baby'southward communication is generally basic and non-verbal. Babies are not born with oral communication or language. This is something they learn from their interactions with others. Within the first yr of life, babies say their first words, and they can soon speak full sentences. After simply ii–3 years, babies are already quite skillful at verbal communication and are able to say what they want. This fast progress in language abilities is probably supported by genetic weather that support fast language learning.

Even so, it is interesting to think that a baby has already taken the starting time steps in terms of language development fifty-fifty before birth [1]. This sounds impossible when we know that language needs to be learnt and does not happen automatically, unlike breathing or sleeping. But babies are actually born knowing the sound and melody of their mother tongue – and they can already "speak" by following the melodic pattern of the language. Of grade, this "speaking" does not involve words, and the sound made by newborn babies is often that of crying. But this crying follows a certain melody. Yous might think that all babies sound similar when they cry, only when a grouping of German language and French scientists investigated the crying sounds of German and French newborn babies [2], they actually discovered that they were different! Every bit you tin can see in Figure 1, French babies show a cry melody with low intensity at the beginning, which then rises. German babies, on the other hand, testify a weep melody with high intensity at the beginning, which then falls. These findings become even more interesting when y'all know that these cry melodies resemble the melodies of the 2 languages when people speak French or German: High german is, like English, a language that stresses words at the commencement, while French stresses words toward their endings. To give an case, the German word for daddy is "papa" with a stress on the beginning syllable: pa pa. The French word for daddy is "papa" with a stress on the last syllable: pa pa. The surprising thing is that the cry melodies of French and German newborn babies follow these speech stress patterns!

Figure 1 - The sound patterns of babies' cries.

The two diagrams show the intensity of the sound as a black curvature over fourth dimension, in a 1.two-southward frame. The wider the curves (i.eastward., the higher the amplitude), the more intense the audio. The upper diagram shows the sound pattern of a typical cry for French newborn babies. The weep'south highest intensity is at the finish (ascension from left to right). The lower diagram shows the sound pattern of a typical weep for High german newborn babies. Here, unlike in the French example, the cry is more than intense at the first (falling from left to correct). These two different melodies of crying are similar to the sounds of the two languages, French and German, which appear to be learnt already earlier nativity.

How tin this be? How tin babies learn the melodies and sounds of their female parent tongue even before they are born? The answer is as simple as this: well-nigh 3 months before nascence, while still in their female parent'due south womb, babies start to hear. At that fourth dimension, their ears are developed enough and beginning working. Normally, it volition generally be the female parent's vox that reaches the baby'southward ears within the womb, but other loud sounds or voices besides. Consequently, every day of the last few months earlier nascency, the baby can hear people speaking – this is the first step in linguistic communication learning! This get-go stride, in other words, is to larn the melody of the language. Afterwards, during the next few months and years after birth, other features of linguistic communication are added, similar the meaning of words or the germination of full sentences.

As we have seen, the development of the baby and the baby'south organs provides important preconditions for spoken communication and language. This can be the development of the hearing system, which allows the babe to hear the sound of language from the womb. Just the simultaneous development of the brain is just as important, because it is our brain that provides us with the ability to learn and to develop new skills. And information technology is from our encephalon that speech and language originate. Certain parts of the brain are responsible for understanding words and sentences. These brain areas are mainly located in two regions, in the left side of the encephalon, and are connected by nerves. Together, these brain regions and their connections grade a network that provides the hardware for language in the brain. Without this brain network, we would not be able to talk or to understand what's beingness said. Effigy 2 illustrates this talkative mesh in the encephalon. The connections within this network are particularly important, considering they let the network nodes to substitution information.

Figure 2 - A view of a brain, as seen from the left side. — Figure 2 - A view of a encephalon, as seen from the left side.

Ii brain regions are highlighted in red and orange. These regions are strongly involved in processing voice communication and language. The blue and green lines illustrate connections that link the two regions with ane another and form a network of language areas. There is an upper nerve connexion (blue) and a lower nervus connexion (light-green).

Now, let's keep in mind how important this network is to fully primary linguistic communication. Assuming that the brain develops during infancy and childhood, we might wonder from what age onward the network of language areas is well enough established to serve as a sufficient precondition to speaking and agreement linguistic communication. Is it that the network is at that place from a very early age on, and that the development of language is dependent on learning based on the input from the environment? Or is this network something that develops over time and provides a growing precondition that enables more and more possible linguistic communication functions?

These questions can exist answered by investigating the nervus fiber connections in the brain. The nerve fibers are a crucial part of the encephalon and form the linguistic communication network. These nerve fibers can be visualized using a technique called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI is an imaging method that allows u.s. to take pictures of someone'southward encephalon inside their head, like X-ray simply without any rays being used. Instead, the magnetic properties of water (yes, water is slightly magnetic) are used while the person is inside a strong magnetic field created by the MR scanner.

Now, using this technique, a comparing betwixt newborn infants and older children (for example 7-twelvemonth-olds who are already going to school) would show if their encephalon networks are the same or not. If they are the same, this would mean that there are preconditions for language in the brain from birth onward. If they are different, this would hateful that the brain's preconditions for certain language functions probably are not however fully established at birth, and that these preconditions grow as the babies go older. The brain networks for newborns and seven-twelvemonth-olds are depicted in Figure 3.

Figure 3 - A view of the brains of newborn infants (left) and 7-year-old children (right). — Effigy 3 - A view of the brains of newborn infants (left) and 7-year-old children (right).

The ii of import language regions of the encephalon are highlighted in blood-red and orange (like in Effigy 2). The technique of magnetic resonance imaging provides images of the nerve connections between the two language regions. The lower nerve [green (B)] connects these regions of the brain in both newborns and children. But the upper nerve between the linguistic communication regions [blue (A)] is just observed in children, not yet in infants. However, infants already bear witness a connection to a directly neighboring region [yellow (A)]. This ways that the language network in infants is non fully established yet. The important connexion by the upper nerve yet has to develop. On the other hand, the network shown for children is already very similar to that of adults and shows two network connections, an upper one and a lower one.

As tin be seen, for both newborn infants and children going to school, the network of encephalon connections between the language regions is, in general, established. For newborn infants, a bones connection (green in Effigy 3B) inside the linguistic communication network can be used. This is an important precondition from a very early age on. But the important upper connexion between the language regions (blue in Figure 3A) cannot be seen in newborns. All the same, they already possess a second upper connection (yellow in Figure 3A) that does not connect to the red language region directly, simply to a region right next to it that helps to develop and increase oral communication and linguistic communication abilities. This means that the full linguistic communication network equally information technology is used for language abilities past older children does not exist in newborn babies nevertheless, merely it also ways that they already possess a basic network. It is probably true that the total language network is an important precondition in development that allows children to acquire and employ more advanced language skills.

Every bit we take seen here, the development of the hearing system and the development of the encephalon language network provide crucial preconditions for infants to be able to develop and ameliorate their linguistic communication abilities. Although infants already possess an important groundwork for language conquering, more than advanced language learning becomes possible as the brain continues to develop during childhood. Different stages of the linguistic communication network, every bit shown in Figure 3, demonstrate that the language network develops over fourth dimension. The nerve fiber connections in the brain modify throughout our lives. During infancy and childhood, they become more and more than powerful in their ability to transmit information, and it is simply when we reach our teenage years that many of these nerve fibers stop developing. When nosotros become old, they slowly get-go to turn down. For each historic period for which the networks are illustrated (for case for newborn babies and for children, as in Effigy 3), we merely go a snapshot of a continuously changing affair. And it is not but maturation and crumbling that influence these networks. For case, a therapy that is supposed to cure a illness might also alter the brain. Everything we experience and learn can potentially impact the encephalon and the brain networks. In other words, with each lesson nosotros larn at school, we change our brains!

References

[1] ↑ Brauer, J., Anwander, A., Perani, D., and Friederici, A. D. 2013. Dorsal and ventral pathways in linguistic communication development. Encephalon Lang. 127:289–95. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2013.03.001

[2] ↑ Mampe, B., Friederici, A. D., Christophe, A., and Wermke, K. 2009. Newborns' cry melody is shaped past their native language. Curr. Biol. 19:1994–seven. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.09.064