Study of polyglots offers insight on brain's language processing

[Behind the Aegis]

While most people speak only one language or perhaps two, some are proficient in many. These people are called polyglots. And they are helping to provide insight into how the brain deals with language, the principal method of human communication.

In a new study involving a group of polyglots, the brain activity of the participants was monitored using a method called functional magnetic resonance imaging as they listened to passages read in various languages.

With one intriguing exception, activity increased in the areas of the cerebral cortex involved in the brain's language-processing network when these polyglots - who spoke between five and 54 languages - heard languages in which they were the most proficient compared to ones of lesser or no proficiency.

"We think this is because when you process a language that you know well, you can engage the full suite of linguistic operations - the operations that the language system in your brain supports," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist Evelina Fedorenko, a member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research and senior author of the study published on Monday in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

more...