LANGUAGE Part 3

THE MULTILINGUAL BRAIN AND ITS ADVANTAGES.

Considering there are about 7,000 different spoken languages in the world, speaking just one language and remaining monolingual may not be enough to succeed in a world that is becoming increasingly interdependent and competitive.

Even though English is a universal language that is most often used in the world for trade, banking, art, science and technology, learning a second language may enable you to succeed in your profession, even adds more values to your intellectual capacity and personality. In addition, learning a second language, you must be able to perfect the technical language of your profession, be efficient in digital communication and computer language to be successful. In other words, the modern working environment is already pushing all of us to become multilingual.

If you become an immigrant and live in another country, you must learn the language of your adapted country, as a second language, to succeed there. It is estimated that more than half of the world 7 billion population is multilingual.

Since language is created and learned by the human’s brain, it is important to know whether multilingual brains are any different then monolingual brains?

Scientific studies on this question have shown that there are subtle differences between monolingual and multilingual brains. Brain scientists investigating the neural basis of language and other sensory stimuluses in the first few years of life have shown that newborn brain size is around 350-400 grams at birth, and rapidly starts developing within early years of life. Ultimately reaching the adult brain size of 1,400 grams. During these critical years of brain development, providing proper sensory stimuluses (visual, auditory, tactile, taste and smell) and perceptions for children is very important. These stimuluses and perceptions help shape early brain development and the necessary wiring of neural networks of the brain. Therefore pre–K education and kindergarten education are even more important to shape brain developments than the educations later in life.

By the same token, early exposure of children to multi languages, help shape their brain to develop phonetic ability to learn and to speak multi languages without any accent. Scientific studies by using functional MRI ( f MRI ) have shown that the brain commits phonetics ( phonemas ) of languages in very early life, to the special area of the brain called “ Broca Area.” However if a second language is learned later in life, the brain still uses the same area, but its different sections which are not suited for good “phonaligal commitments.” That is why second languages learned later in life are always spoken with an accent. But comprehension and cognition of languages, no matter when it is learned, remain localized the same specialized region of the brain called “ Wernicke’s Area.”

Because of the plasticity of the brain, multilingual brains easily forms extra and more complex neural connections and networks to keep the track, control and timely implement of multiple languages.

The prefrontal cortex ( PFC -  the executive brain ) is constantly at work when we talk. It keeps the track what we have said and decides what to say next. It suppresses the information that is not relevant to our talk or belong to co-activated second spoken language. Therefore, multilingual brains have a more powerful prefrontal cortex (PFC).  A powerful PFC is not just specific to languages, it also affects other aspect of cognition, cognition control, thinking, and decision making. Cognition control is a metacognitive ability that makes a person to pay attention only what is important and relevant, in a crowded field of information and misinformation. Bilingual people are also able to do more objective analysis of data at hand, during the decision-making process. They are less prone to make hasty, emotional and erroneous decisions. Bilingualism may also offer a protective effect of age-related memory losses, senility and mental acuity.

So, go ahead learn a second language. It is good for you.