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This story is from the category The Brain
Date posted: 29/08/2009 Our vocabulary continues to grow and expand even in adulthood. Just ten years ago, the word 'blog' did not yet exist - and now we no longer remember when we heard this word for the first time or when we learned its meaning. At some stage new words become just as familiar to us as words we have learned earlier. One of the areas of interest in the Academy of Finland's Neuroscience Research Programme (NEURO) is how the process of learning new words is reflected in the function of the brain. The new research evidence emerging about how the brain processes language and its different levels has important application among other things in the development of language teaching. In one of the experiments conducted in the NEURO programme, participants learned the name and/or purpose of 150 ancient tools. They had never heard these words before. The subjects' brain function was measured by means of magnetoencelography during the naming of the tools, both before and after the learning period. The results show that the brain uses the same neural networks to process both familiar and newly learned words. The names of objects were processed in the left temporal and frontal lobe within half a second of showing the image of the tool to the subject. "If the subject had only recently learned the name of the tool, the the naming process induced an activation that was just as strong or stronger than the activation induced by the image of a familiar object," says Academy Professor Riitta Salmelin, HUT Low Temperature Laboratory, who is in charge of the research. According to Salmelin the learning of the meaning of ancient tools did not cause corresponding clear differences in the function of the brain. In other words, it seems that the processing of meanings in the brain differs essentially from the processing of names. On the other hand, the performance results indicated that new definitions were learned even faster than new names. See the full Story via external site: www.physorg.com Most recent stories in this category (The Brain): 17/05/2013: Brain-Imaging Study Links Cannabinoid Receptors to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder —Findings Bring First Pharmaceutical Treatment for Ptsd Within Reach— |
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