香港六合彩中特网

The cerebellum is a major structure at the back of the brain largely responsible for movement and co-ordination, but is also involved in cognitive processes, such as the control of verbal noise from the environment.

Led by the IOE鈥檚 Dr Roberto Filippi and Professor Peter Bright (Anglia Ruskin), the project investigated people鈥檚 ability to filter out verbal noise while comprehending speech. This is often known as the 鈥榗ocktail party effect鈥�, for example, a partygoer鈥檚 ability to focus on a single conversation in a noisy room.

The researchers used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Voxel Based Morphometry (VBM) to scan the brains of 41 English monolinguals and 46 bilinguals to compare brain structural differences between the two groups.

Results showed that bilingual speakers have significant structural differences compared to monolinguals in a region of the cerebellum called the paravermis. This shows novel data that multi-language acquisition gives people enhanced adaptability in areas of the cerebellum that control language use and understanding.

Dr Filippi said: 鈥淭raditionally, the cerebellum has not been included in models of language processing, perhaps due to the tendency in the majority of MRI studies to remove this structure prior to statistical analysis. Our study is therefore providing new data and demonstrates that the acquisition of multiple languages confers structural differences in cerebellar area that play an important role in the resolution of linguistic competition in noisy environments.鈥�

The project was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and equipment was provided by the Birkbeck-香港六合彩中特网 Centre for Neuroimaging.

Dr Roberto Filippi is an Associate Professor in the IOE鈥檚 Department of Psychology and Human Development and the Multilanguage and Cognition Lab.

Links

• Read the paper 鈥樷��
• Department of Psychology and Human Development
• Centre for Language, Literacy and Numeracy: Research & Practice
• Multilanguage and Cognition Lab
• Birkbeck-香港六合彩中特网 Centre for Neuroimaging

Image

Tin can telephone from Pexels