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2 languages make your brain buff
CNN: If you had any doubts about exposing your child - or yourself - to a foreign language, there's more evidence than ever that being bilingual has enormous benefits for your brain. Scientists presented their research supporting this idea Friday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Read the whole story: CNN
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What Watson Can Learn From the Human Brain
Wired: Watson won. That set of microchips will soon join the pantheon of machines that have defeated humans, from the steam-powered hammer that killed John Henry to the Deep Blue supercomputer that battled Kasparov. Predictably enough, the victory inspired a chorus of “computer overlord” anxieties, as people used the victory of microchips to proclaim the decline of the human mind, or at least the coming of the singularity. Read the whole story: Wired
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How Couples Recover After an Argument Stems From Their Infant Relationships
When studying relationships, psychological scientists have often focused on how couples fight. But how they recover from a fight is important, too. According to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, couples’ abilities to bounce back from conflict may depend on what both partners were like as infants. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have been following a cohort of people since before they were born, in the mid-1970s. When the subjects were about 20 years old, they visited the lab with their romantic partners for testing.
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Being bilingual may delay Alzheimer’s and boost brain power
The Guardian: Learning a second language and speaking it regularly can improve your cognitive skills and delay the onset of dementia, according to researchers who compared bilingual individuals with people who spoke only one language. Their study suggests that bilingual speakers hold Alzheimer's disease at bay for an extra four years on average compared with monoglots. School-level language skills that you use on holiday may even improve brain function to some extent. Read the whole story: The Guardian
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An Infant’s Refined Tongue
ScienceNOW: Your baby's language skills may surprise you. Before they speak—before they even crawl—infants can distinguish between two languages they've never heard before just by looking at the face of a speaker. And if they're raised in a bilingual household, they retain this ability for a long time, according to research presented here today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW). Read the whole story: ScienceNOW
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People who speak two languages are ‘better at multi-tasking and less likely to develop Alzheimer’s’
The Daily Mail: Learning a second language boosts your brain power and can protect against Alzheimer's disease, scientists say. New research has shown that bilingual people do better in mental challenges and are more skilled at multi-tasking than those who have just one tongue. They also develop symptoms of dementia an average of four or five years later. Read the whole story: The Daily Mail
