Women hedge, issue disclaimers and ask questions when they communicate, language features that can suggest uncertainty, lack of confidence and low status. But men do the same, according to new research from the University of California, Davis.
Full article: UC Davis News
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.
Full article: Academy of Finland
Rresearchers identify gene associated with language, speech and reading disorders.
Full article: AlphaGalileo
People who struggle to distinguish musical notes have fewer brain connections in an area involved in language and speech.
Full article: New Scientist
According to a recent study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, it appears humans are not actually capable of “turning off” another language entirely. Psychologists Eva Van Assche, Wouter Duyck, Robert Hartsuiker and Kevin Diependaele from Ghent University found that knowledge of a second language actually has a continuous impact on native-language reading.
Full article: EurekAlert
Language networks are small-world and scale-free, although they are built based on different principles. Similar global statistical properties shown by language networks are independent of linguistic structure and typology. So, do linguistic structures really influence the statistical properties of a language network? More concretely, does semantic or conceptual network have the same properties as a syntactic one?
Full article: EurekAlert
Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have succeeded for the first time in devising a model that describes and identifies a basic cellular mechanism that enables networks of neurons to efficiently decode speech in changing conditions.
Full article: EurekAlert
We see, hear and feel, and make sense of countless diverse, quickly changing stimuli in our environment seemingly without effort. However, doing what our brains do with ease is often an impossible task for computers. Researchers at the Leipzig Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging in London have now developed a mathematical model which could significantly improve the automatic recognition and processing of spoken language. In the future, this kind of algorithms which imitate brain mechanisms could help machines to perceive the world around them.
Full article: Max Planck Society Press Release
The more empathy one has for another, the lighter the accent will be when speaking in a second language. This is the conclusion of a new study carried out at the University of Haifa by Dr. Raphiq Ibrahim and Dr. Mark Leikin of the Department of Learning Disabilities and Prof. Zohar Eviatar of the Department of Psychology at the University of Haifa. The study has been published in the International Journal of Bilingualism. “In addition to personal-affective factors, it has been found that the ‘language ego’ is also influenced by the sociopolitical position of the speaker towards the majority group,” the researchers stated.
Full article: University of Haifa
The study of the neural basis of language has largely focused on regions in the cortex – the outer brain layers thought by many researchers to have expanded during human evolution. Research at Brown University’s Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, reported in the September Issue of Cortex adds to evidence that deeper, subcortical regions are also critical by pinpointing when Parkinson’s disease patients have difficulty while processing grammatically complex sentences. In Parkinson’s disease, degeneration of subcortical dopamine-secreting neurons leads not only to motor symptoms but often also to cognitive deficits.
Full article: EurekAlert
Four-thousand years ago, an urban civilization lived and traded on what is now the border between Pakistan and India. During the past century, thousands of artifacts bearing hieroglyphics left by this prehistoric people have been discovered. Today, a team of Indian and American researchers are using mathematics and computer science to try to piece together information about the still-unknown script.
Full article: University of Washington News
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