Learning Language by Eavesdropping

Reblogged from NeuWriteSD.org:

via WikiMedia Commons.

Though kids seem to learn language without effort, scientists continue to puzzle over how children go from scream-y, pre-linguistic squooshballs to slightly-less-scream-y toddlers who can string a few words together (including “no!”) to older children who speak more or less like adults do. Researchers have learned a lot about how kids learn to talk—they know that children are in tune with their environment, with caregivers [1-2]. More recently, research suggests that when mom and dad direct their attention (and verbal labels) towards what a child is already engaged with, children might to learn more quickly [3]–that is, when mom says “doggy” and a child is petting the dog, the word is probably more likely to stick than if only mom was looking at the dog.

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Antidepressants, plasticity, and language development

Reblogged from NeuWriteSD.org:

As an attendee at the 5th annual Society for Neurobiology (SNL) conference, four years had passed since my first exposure to the meeting–a discussion of the state-of-the-art research being done on the neuroscience of language processing. In those four years, things have happened! This meeting left me marveling at new advances and the number of presenters successfully using new technologies. Techniques of note included ECoG (electrocorticography) (1), TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) (2), and even pharmacological studies reaching down to the molecular level investigating speech perception of babies in utero (3).

Read more at NeuWriteSD.org.