Author: Victoria Guerra-García, PhD candidate at the University of the Basque Country, Dept. of Linguistics and Basque Studies (EHU) and member of The Bilingual Mind Research Group (Gogo Elebiduna) You’re in the middle of a conversation, and suddenly the word won’t come. You know exactly what you want to say, but you just can’t retrieve […]
Author: Atheena Johnson, Docteure en linguistique appliquée, Université Paris Nanterre Over the decades, technological devices have been gradually integrated into language learning, as is recently the case with generative artificial intelligence (AI). Does the sophistication of these tools eventually render pencils and pens obsolete? Or can digital uses be combined with handwriting? How does writing […]
University of Houston professor of psychology Arturo Hernandez is disputing a high-profile study claiming that people who live in multilingual countries show healthier brain aging. Though the study got lots of attention, Hernandez and collaborators report that the findings warrant cautious interpretation and reframing of public health implications. “We took a closer look and argued […]
Authors: Lieke A. Heijmans is an undergraduate student at the Linguistics program of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Adrià Rofes is associate professor in Neurolinguistics at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Losing the ability to speak doesn’t always mean losing the ability to communicate. For many people living with aphasia (i.e., a language […]
Have you ever found yourself spending five minutes talking to someone and suddenly using their words instead of your own? Say, for example, that you usually say “couch” but now suddenly you call it “sofa.” You say “TV,” but suddenly it’s “the telly.” You’ve never in your life referred to dinner as “tea” but after […]
Past neuroscience and psychology studies have shown that people’s expectations of the world can influence their perceptions, either by directing their attention to expected stimuli or by reducing their sensitivity (i.e., perceptual acuity) to variations within the categories of stimuli we expect to be exposed to. While the effects of expectations on perceptions are now […]
If you speak more than one language, you are probably familiar with not being able to sound like a native speaker. At least, you know you’re trying your best to speak a foreign language! And, you know, in the end, your accent is also part of your identity. But wouldn’t it feel quite discouraging if […]
Authors: Elissa-Marie Cocquyt, speech therapist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Groningen & Adrià Rofes, assistant professor of Neurolinguistics at the University of Groningen. The human brain is one of the most wonderful organs. In general, our brain consists of a left and right part, of which the outermost layer is called the ‘cortex’ […]
connectivity Author: Juan F. Trillo, PhD in Linguistics and Philosophy (U. Autónoma de Madrid), PhD in Literary Studies (U. Complutense de Madrid). The plasticity of the brain and its ability to adapt to the most diverse requirements and demands, such as the use of a specific language, has been well known for years . This […]
I n a 2017 interview, the famous actress Kate Walsh – whom you may know from the TV show Grey’s anatomy – reported the following: “ I started having more cognitive difficulties. It felt like aphasia [language problems] , but it was not just not being able to find words; I would lose my train […]