Crossing borders in language science: What bilinguals tell us about mind and brain

Sonja Kotz investigates how neural rhythm processing shapes the way we communicate

2011-02-20

(Press-News.org) Sonja Kotz leads the Minerva research group "Neurocognition of Rhythm in Communication" at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. She will present evidence from neuroimaging on the impact of cognitive functions on bilingual processing at the AAAS symposium "Crossing Borders in Language Science: What Bilinguals Tell Us About Mind and Brain". Rhythm, as the recurrent patterning of events in time, underlies most human behavior such as speech, music, and body movements. Sonja Kotz investigates how temporal patterns in di!erent languages influence the processing of phonological, semantic, and syntactic information. Individuals who learn a new language usually need time to develop a "feel" for its characteristics. With rapid speech it can initially even be difficult to recognize individual words. "This is because the brain has to become accustomed to new speech rhythms," explains Sonja Kotz. Our brain is very good at recognizing patterns in the environment and uses them to create general predictions about the near future. "We assume there is a neural network permanently engaged in evaluating information about duration, rhythm, tempo and stress of syllables in order to recognize temporal regularities in the stream of speech", says Kotz. During language acquisition, this network could store fundamental regularities of speech in the brain so that later, language processing is more efficient. Rhythm processing predominantly occurs in brain areas in and just belowthe cerebral cortex but also in motor areas and evolutionarily older areas like the cerebellum and basal ganglia. "This points to an early stage of development," says Kotz. "The evolution of language would not have been possible without the development of brain areas which have the ability to structure events temporally." To meet the high communicative demands of homo sapiens, the motor system in and below the cerebral cortex might have become increasingly sensitive to rhythmic input.

### END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Europe attracts American researchers

2011-02-20

One of the goals of the European Research Council, ERC, is to bring the world's leading researchers to work in Europe. American Juleen Zierath is one of those who have received funds from the ERC. She found the best environment for her research at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. It's more usual that scientists leave Europe to work in the US. But Juleen Zierath, Professor of Clinical Integrative Physiology at Karolinska Institutet, has travelled in the opposite direction. An American who was educated in the US, she travelled to Sweden to carry out research. She is one ...

Deep brain stimulation helps severe OCD, but pioneer advises caution

2011-02-20

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — When obsessive-compulsive disorder is of crippling severity and drugs and behavior therapy can't help, there has been for just over a year a thread — or rather a wire — of hope. By inserting a thin electrode deep into the brain, doctors can precisely deliver an electrical current to a cord of the brain's wiring and soften the severity of the symptoms. "Deep brain stimulation" therapy for OCD won Food and Drug Administration approval in 2009 for extreme cases under its humanitarian device exemption. On Feb. 18 at the annual meeting ...

Research universities play a major role in national security

2011-02-20

The United States' preoccupation with national security, including counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and cyber security, is also a concern of higher education, according to Graham Spanier, president of Penn State University. Spanier, who chairs the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board (NSHEAB), addressed attendees today (Feb. 18) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., stressing that higher education is part of the national security solution. "The National Security Higher Education Advisory ...

John Theurer Cancer Center orthopedic oncologist shares new limb sparing surgical techniques

2011-02-20

Hackensack, NJ (Feb 18, 2011) – James C. Wittig, M.D., chief of the division of skin and sarcoma cancer at the John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center will present eleven different educational videos on innovative approaches to orthopedic oncology at the upcoming American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Conference. Dr. Wittig is known for inventing some of the most-used best practices in limb-sparing surgery. In 2009, he and his colleagues began filming their surgeries so that other surgeons across the globe could use their radically innovative ...

Asthma through the eyes of a medical anthropologist

2011-02-20

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Asthma diagnosis and management vary dramatically around the world, said David Van Sickle, an honorary associate fellow at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, during a presentation today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Asthma affects an estimated 8 percent of Americans, and about 300 million people around the world, but varying practices in diagnosis and treatment have global implications in understanding a widespread, chronic condition, says Van Sickle, who applies ...

Infants raised in bilingual environments can distinguish unfamiliar languages: UBC research

2011-02-20

Infants raised in households where Spanish and Catalan are spoken can discriminate between English and French just by watching people speak, even though they have never been exposed to these new languages before, according to University of British Columbia psychologist Janet Werker. Presented today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, Werker's latest findings provide further evidence that exposure to two native languages contributes to the development of perceptual sensitivity that extends beyond their mother ...

Fishing down food web leaves fewer big fish, more small fish in past century: UBC research

2011-02-20

Predatory fish such as cod, tuna, and groupers have declined by two-thirds over the past 100 years, while small forage fish such as sardine, anchovy and capelin have more than doubled over the same period, according to University of British Columbia researchers. Led by Prof. Villy Christensen of UBC's Fisheries Centre, a team of scientists used more than 200 marine ecosystem models from around the world and extracted more than 68,000 estimates of fish biomass from 1880 to 2007. They presented the findings today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science ...

How nature's patterns form

2011-02-20

When people on airplanes ask Alan Newell what he works on, he tells them "flower arrangements." He could also say "fingerprints" or "sand ripples" or "how plants grow." "Most patterns you see, including the ones on sand dunes or fish or tigers or leopards or in the laboratory – even the defects in the patterns – have many universal features," said Newell, a Regents' Professor of Mathematics at the University of Arizona. "All these different systems exhibit strikingly similar features when it comes to the patterns they form," he said. "Patterns arise in systems when ...

Chemist focuses on education for real-world sustainability challenges

2011-02-20

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Introductory college science classes need to improve their coverage of issues related to sustainability, a noted chemistry educator told the American Association for the Advancement of Science today. "Across the nation, we have a problem," said Catherine Middlecamp, a distinguished faculty associate in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "We are using a 20th-century curriculum, and this is the 21st century." Students, Middlecamp says, want a curriculum that will prepare them for upcoming challenges related to climate change, pollution ...

Cost-effectiveness research needs to be considered in developing new medical technology

2011-02-20

Cost-effectiveness analysis should play a bigger role in the American health care system, argued a University of Chicago researcher Friday at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "The effects of science and technology on health care costs depend on the policy context in which those technologies are developed and applied," said David Meltzer, Associate Professor of Medicine, in his presentation, "Policies to Mobile Technology and Science for Health Care Cost Control." Meltzer, who also holds a PhD in economics, pointed out ...

Crossing borders in language science: What bilinguals tell us about mind and brain

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: