Bilingual advantage

“If you walk into a room, where a million things can attract your attention, how does your mind pay attention to what you need to pay attention to without getting distracted?” Dr Ellen Bialystok [link]

How we manage to stay ‘tuned-in’ is one of the miracles of modern humanity. Although we take it for granted, not all species are so equipped. The ability to focus and quickly switch focus is part of a legacy system handed down from our ancestors [link]. Neuroscience locates this system in the prefrontal cortex. That’s the part of the brain responsible for focusing attention, ignoring distractions and holding different scenarios in mind while trying to stay clear. According to the Journal of Neurology [link], bilinguals have an advantage doing this that lasts a lifetime. People who can hold a mental narrative in two languages ..and choose the one that best expresses their thoughts in conversation, also excel at swiftly deciding what’s important in situations where they’re presented with relevant and irrelevant information.

Neuro speculation

The amygdala is an almond-shaped mass of gray matter deep inside the cerebral cortex that plays a central role in self-control. It helps keep emotional expression in-compliance with culturally accepted norms. When damaged, an individual has difficulty with impulse-control and restraint from inappropriate and aberrant behavior [link]. Over the past decade, research has uncovered a lot more about the amygdala and how it processes signals from our social environment [link].

I have a theory. I believe that some social signals affect the amygdala differently than others. Some elicit greater restraint and vigilance while others offer release from conditioned restraint and vigilance. Neuroscience informs us that when the amygdala is surgically removed, animals show signs of inappropriate affect ..boredom where there should be fear and hypersexual activity where there is no enticement [link]. I predict that if you housed a normal group of animals where they could watch the frenetic activity of the amygdala-impaired group ..they too would show signs of inappropriate affect. Observation alone would induce the same effect as impairment. MRI studies already show heightened activity in response to authority and perceived threat. I believe they would reveal another type of activity in response to collapse of authority and diminished threat. My theory says that the amygdala would then act to release spectators from conditioned inhibition and give license to repressed impulses and sexual aggression.

This may explain the high incident of sexual assault committed by revelers celebrating the downfall of President Mubarak in Egypt [link]. Festivities associated with a break in the social order released a frenzy of predatory sexual behavior in a few that quickly spread to other participants in the crowd. Predatory behavior of this sort has also been observed at soccer matches and in crowds celebrating at the Rose Parade in California. I believe that lowered internal restraints coupled with the lax enforcement of sexual harassment laws in Egypt may have contributed to the chain of events observed. By no mean am I offering excuses for what occurred, I’m only trying to draw a possible connection between real-world events and accounts of aggression reported from the lab.

My heart goes out to the CBS correspondent who fell victim to it.

Avatar

At the University of Geneva in Switzerland, researchers performed a series of studies where they put subjects in a computer generated ‘avatar’ moving through virtual reality [link]. Each subject was fitted with a bicycle cap containing sensors to monitor brain activity and exposed to different digital, 3D environments through head-mounted stereoscopic goggles. What they found were significant changes in the brain's temporo-parietal and frontal regions – the parts of the brain responsible for integrating signals from the body with vision to produce a coherent perception of where we are in relation to our surroundings. Their results expand on clinical studies done in neurological patients reporting out-of-body experiences. Findings of a neurobiological basis for the sense of ‘self’ could lead to advances in the fields of kinesiology, neuro-rehabilitation, and pain treatments. They also contribute to understanding neurological and psychiatric diseases, and have relevance in the fields of robotics and virtual reality.

Neural regenerative training

“The number and size of neural-pathways and the integrity of myelination are important for rapid conduction in the nervous system. They are especially important for the accurate coding and transmission of speech signals.” ~ Dr Paula Tallal (left)

Continued from a previous entry ~> [link]  I leave Esalen and head north on Highway One to UC San Francisco where Paula Tallal and Mike Merzenich are developing neural retraining programs for dyslexia. I have to admit that it felt a little surreal being here after spending 14 days on the Big Sur coast. But I’m thankful to Portia for giving me this opportunity. Anyway, I listen as they explain how dyslexia is caused by “ ..under-developed neural-connections in the auditory system.” [link]. This makes it difficult for children to detect “..the subtle cues that signal the onset of phonemes.” Phonemes are the shortest and most ephemeral units of speech. They require high-speed network-connections to detect. Although they may not be as important for speech recognition ..phonemic awareness is definitely required for reading comprehension. This is especially true when children are trying to decipher words for the first time. They tell me that, by testing children’s’ ability to recognize properties of speech, it is now possible to detect dyslexia as early as the first year of life. Well ahead of reading instruction. They have developed a training program that can re-activate the growth of neuro-pathways for phonemic awareness. They have found that intervention later in life can also help regenerate neural growth if the training approximates the early learning environment of a child. In other words, neuro-regenerative training can be successful through adolescence and possibly adulthood if it is presented in a manner that’s both socially interactive and engaging

Training: They have developed a program of intense ‘sensory discrimination’ training to re-activate neural-growth. Training begins by presenting phonemes in an exaggerated manner. This means they sound louder, last longer and arrive farther apart than phonemes in regular speech. During a typical training session, they ask students to identify which phoneme they recognize from a series they’d previously heard. As students progress, the phonemes are softened, shortened and presented at a rate that more closely resembles the flow of speech. To make it both engaging and rewarding, they hosted training on an interactive computer game. Improvements were verified using standard reading tests and brain imaging. MRI scans actually showed progressive differentiation of neurons in the language centers of the brain [link]. I was stoked (because I’m weird like that). However, the next question I have to ask is whether or not these results hold-up outside the lab, where events in life can quickly overtake the best-laid plans of neuroscience practitioners.

to be continued ..