Language allows us to share thoughts and feelings with somebody else. It’s our cultural glue. Otherwise, we’d live in a world of babel. But there’s much more to language, including elements that affect the structure and functioning of the brain.<\/p>\n
While the\u00a0first words<\/a>\u00a0spoken may have been 250,000 years ago, now more than\u00a0half of the people around the world<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 estimates vary from 60 to 75 percent \u2013 speak at least two languages.<\/p>\n Eighty percent of primary and secondary students in 24 European countries<\/a>\u00a0are learning a foreign language, usually English. Across the United States the number is closer to 20 percent, but this varies by state. In New Jersey, 51 percent of students have a second language course included as part of the school day.<\/p>\n Learning those languages impacts our noggins.\u00a0Brain scans show<\/a>\u00a0that people who speak more than one language have more gray matter in their anterior cingulate cortex, the area linked to everything from learning to social behavior to resolving conflicts.<\/p>\n RELATED STORY A leading\u00a0neuropsychologist<\/a>\u00a0says it’s like a muscle \u2013 using it makes it bigger and more flexible. There’s a sort of competition that goes on in the brains of people who speak multiple languages. Since it’s possible to use either language at any moment, their brains have developed ways to regulate which language is spoken.\u00a0The brain’s executive functions<\/a>, a regulatory system that includes inhibition, allow a person to focus, and “pause” the language not being used.<\/p>\n Research shows this mechanism has a lot of other benefits. People who speak more than one language are better at switching between two tasks. For example, bilinguals can switch from categorizing objects by color to sorting them by shape more rapidly than monolingual people.<\/p>\n Why is this? Their brains regularly inhibit languages and employ that same regulation to “inhibit” tasks. It doesn’t end there. People who speak more than one language also have the\u00a0ability to make more rational decisions<\/a>. When faced with a choice, the inhibition center quiets intuitions and emotions.<\/p>\n This means that bilingual people might be better employees in jobs requiring\u00a0rational planning, managing complexity and problem solving<\/a>.\u00a0Other implications:<\/a>\u00a0bilingual children are better at adjusting to environmental changes, and bilingual seniors can experience less cognitive decline. There are even indications that speaking more than one language can lead to\u00a0faster stroke recovery<\/a>.<\/p>\n Is picking up a second language easy?\u00a0\u00a0Not always, especially as an adult. But the brain-benefits are awfully robust, not to mention it’s useful knowing the difference between embarazada and embarrassed.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.newsy.com\/stories\/a-bilingual-brain-solves-problems-faster\/ Check inside the link for video. Language allows us to share thoughts and feelings with somebody else. It’s our cultural glue. Otherwise, we’d live in a world of babel. But there’s much more to language, including elements that affect the structure and functioning of the brain. While the\u00a0first words\u00a0spoken may have been 250,000 years …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20886,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[57,39,15],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bilingualism","tag-early-years","tag-parents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20886"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":381,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions\/381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/as\/ealaberdeenshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Young](\"https:\/\/newsymain-npgroup.netdna-ssl.com\/images\/videos\/356x200\/1534344594.jpg\")
Young Kids Who Hold More Conversations Grow Their Brains<\/a><\/p>\n
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