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What's New
The Brain and Language Laboratory
__________________________________________________________________________ The state-of-the-art Brain and Language Laboratory is led by Dr. Laura-Ann Petitto, the new Science Director and Co-Principal Investigator of the National Science Foundation and Gallaudet University’s Science of Learning Center, “Visual Language and Learning (VL²).” The Laboratory features one of the world’s most advanced brain imaging systems, called functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), as well as an Infant Habituation Lab, Video Recording and Editing studios, Video-Conferencing facilities, Experimental and Observation Chambers, Library, and more. The new laboratory will be the site of neuroimaging and behavioral studies that will provide knowledge about the biological mechanisms and environmental factors, which, together, make possible the human capacity to learn and convey language, achieve reading mastery, and become a skilled bilingual. __________________________________________________________________________ Simultaneous imaging of neural activations of women and men in real-time conversation using fNIRS Society for Neuroscience November 12-16, 2011 Washington, D.C.
Sun,
Nov 13, 8:00 - 9:00 AM
Kaja Jasinska1, Gelareh Jowkar-Baniani1, Faiza Ahmed1, Eve Forster1, Shaaista Bhasin1, Anthony Naimi1, Laura-Ann Petitto* (Gallaudet University) and Kevin N. Dunbar* (University of Maryland) * = Principal Investigators and Corresponding Authors 1 = University of Toronto Scarborough
The idea that “Men are from Mars” and “Women are from Venus” when communicating with one another is an often expressed adage in popular culture. Such gender differences are assumed to be the result of basic brain differences between men and women when communicating. Do men and women communicate and think in fundamentally different ways?
Using a modern brain imaging systems, called functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (or fNIRS), researchers took on this question. The group was led by Cognitive Neuroscientists, Dunbar and Petitto (formerly at the University of Toronto, and now at the University of Maryland and Gallaudet University, respectively), and conducted with their University of Toronto graduate students, led by Kaja Jasinska. In this first-time study, they asked whether the brains of women and men are similar or different while engaged in face-to-face conversation with a rare technological twist: The researchers used not one, but two fNIRS systems, one attached to the female participant’s brain and the other attached to the male participant’s brain.
fNIRS measures changes in the brain’s blood flow in response to different types of experiences and its small size (similar to a desktop computer), silence, and toleration for movement, makes it ideal for studying natural conversation. Eighteen men and eighteen women (3 groups: 9 male-male, 9 male-female, and 9 female-female pairs) first viewed out-of-sequence video clips from an unfamiliar cartoon, and then conversed to place the events into a plausible story.
In terms of building a basic conversation, women’s and men’s overall conversational structures were similar. Also, women’s and men’s brain activity while they reconstructed a story were similar. Both men and women show similar activity in the left and right sides of the brain’s frontal lobe (underneath the forehead)—the heart of human thinking and reasoning—particularly the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPFC). The DLPFC supports our ability to pay attention to, and maintain, information that we are presently "working on,” termed "working memory," and the RLPFC supports our ability to integrate and reason about different sources of information.
However, gender did matter! Same-gender pairs (be they male and male or female and female), interacted in more similar ways than mixed gender pairs (a male and a female together). Thus, different brain activity was observed depending on whether men were conversing with men, as compared with men conversing with women. The same held for women when talking to another women, as opposed to talking to a man. Men and women showed different activity in the DLPFC and RLPFC depending on whether they were conversing with a same or opposite gender partner.
The findings suggest that the context of an interaction (same- or mixed-gender) has a major impact on the ways that women’s and men’s brain are activated during conversation. To be sure, whether “Men are from Mars” and “Women are from Venus” appears only to be true when each gender dares to try to reach across the planets and communicate with the other! > Poster
Contact Information: Dr. Kevin Dunbar, University of Maryland Email: kndunbar@me.com http://umd.academia.edu/KevinDunbar
Dr. Laura-Ann Petitto, Gallaudet University
Email:
lauraann.petitto@gmail.com
Kaja Kasinska (University of
Toronto) and
Hot Topics Press Book
Mon, Nov 14, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM * = Petitto Corresponding Author
A new study finds a remarkable language advantage in bilingual babies. They have a greater and longer sensitivity to language distinctions that make up the world’s languages, and show unique patterns of brain activation for language, as compared to monolingual babies. The findings, observed by a team led by Dr. Laura-Ann Petitto of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., reveal that early exposure to two languages changes the human brain in ways that afford linguistic advantages to young bilingual children.
As adults, we know well that it is hard to learn a new language like a pro later in life. Yet young monolingual babies begin life as “citizens of the world.” At birth, babies have the capacity to pick out the core language distinctions found in all human languages, specifically phonetic distinctions (the tiny parts of language structure). This capacity makes it possible for babies to learn any language in the world to which they may be exposed. Yet monolingual babies lose this universal capacity by around 14 months old. Not so for bilingual babies!
Petitto and graduate student Kaja Jasinska, used modern brain imaging technology, called functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to look inside of a bilingual baby’s brain. fNIRS measures changes in the brain’s blood flow in response to different types of linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli. They wondered whether being bilingual, as compared to monolingual, would change a baby’s brain, and, consequently, whether this would have any linguistic advantages for the bilingual baby. A central puzzle for which the field had no answer regarding either group was whether young babies use the same classic language areas of the brain as adults, and whether the human brain changes based on bilingual versus monolingual language experience. Of particular interest here was the classic language area called the Superior Temporal Gyrus (STG, which is associated with processing phonetic chunks in language that comprise words, like “ba,” “pa”).
Thirty-two babies (four groups, eight babies per group, consisting of younger and older bilinguals, and younger and older monolinguals) listened to three types of stimuli in quasi random sequences (“Event” design): Native English (“ba,” “pa”), foreign language or Non-Native Hindi phonetic contrasts, and nonlinguistic Tones, while undergoing fNIRS.
When all children were listening to the linguistic units, they showed robust activity in the brain’s classic phonological processing tissue (STG), but not when listening to the nonlinguistic tones, answering an age-old question by showing that the babies’ language processing areas were similar to adults and working hard in early life!
Commensurate with the famous “loss” in phonetic discrimination, older monolingual babies showed decreased STG activity for language distinctions that they never heard before (the foreign/non-native phonetic units), even though their brains were very responsive to them when they were younger babies.
The greatest surprise was seen in the older bilingual babies. They showed robust neural sensitivity to the foreign language units, and this was not at the expense of sensitivity to their Native language contrasts, with its robust STG activation, suggesting a linguistic phonetic processing advantage in bilinguals.
Petitto noted “Bilingual brains provide a window into the full extent that our brain’s language processing tissue could potentially achieve.” Bilingual exposure may provide children with a linguistic “perceptual wedge” that holds open longer their capacity to process a fuller range of the world’s language structure. “What is clear is that early life Bilingual experience can change the brain in ways that provide powerful linguistic advantages to children, which has important implications for education.” > Poster
Dr. Laura-Ann Petitto, Gallaudet University Email: lauraann.petitto@gmail.com
Noted Cognitive Neuroscientist Laura Ann Petitto joins
Washington, D.C. – April 4, 2011 –
Gallaudet University
announced today that Laura-Ann Petitto has been named Science
Director and Co-Principal Investigator of the National Science
Foundation and Gallaudet University’s Science of Learning Center,
Visual Language and Visual Learning Center (VL2), one of only six
Science of Learning Centers in the country funded by the National
Science Foundation. Contact:
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