Increase your Vocabulary and Build your Brain Power!
2005-06-20
Learning a language is a skill that begins early in childhood, but continues to be refined through adolescence. Indeed, adding words to our vocabulary is lifelong. Until recently little was known about how changes in the brain might underlie language acquisition. A group of researchers at the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience at University College London have been studying this question by measuring the grey matter density ofin different brain regions, using MRI scans, and comparing these measures to language ability.
They found that grey matter density of brain cells in a particular region known as within the parietal lobe was associated with proficiency of learning a second language in teenagers. A recent study led reported by Hwee Ling Lee, reported at the annual meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping in Toronto, found that this same brain region was also was associated with vocabulary scores in adolescents who spoke only one language.
These studies are the first evidence to link the density of grey matter in size of a brain region in the brain to learning new words, and suggest that structural changes in the parietal lobe may be a marker for vocabulary proficiency, regardless of how many languages a person may speak.
Source: Organization for Human Brain Mapping
http://www.humanbrainmapping.org
