Tag Archives: brain studies

Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies

via ted.com

Great video and new data on morpheme recognition (distinction) in infants. This is not a new idea. This has been rather well known for years, but the new technology allows for better measurement of this phenomenon. In short, babies are excellent at recognizing and distinguishing sounds from any language, given exposure, up until around 6-8 months. This ability falls off later.

Given the brevity of the presentation, I can’t criticize her too much, but her description of the critical period and what it means to learn a language is certainly not complete. In fact, from what we see here, it is downright misinformed. Her comment that no scientist doubts that a critical period exists (as presented on the chart) is absolutely wrong. In reality, many do.

She is talking almost entirely about sound recognition and distinction, but she uses an SLA theory on language that involves so much more. It’s always difficult to mix-in theories from different fields without operationalizing your terms. I’m going to guess that’s where the 10-minute time limit is restricting.

Scientists at work on rewiring human brains | Marketplace From American Public Media

Scientists at work on rewiring human brains

Brain scans to detect cancer

Scientists in the Midwest are researching ways to rewire the brains of people who’ve suffered traumatic brain injuries. We speak with Pedram Mohseni and Randolph J. Nudo about their work, which has recently been given a $1.44 million grant by the Defense Department.

The Department of Defense has granted $1.44 million to a program run by Pedram Mohseni at Case Western Reserve University and Randolph J. Nudo at Kansas University Medical Center. The two have been working for three years already on a method of essentially rewiring the human brain to bypass the parts that have been damaged.

You’ve got to listen to this. You get the main idea by reading the headline, but the interview and report at a little extra.

Can you imagine this a few years down the road. Aside for tremendous uses for victims of injuries and disease (think Alzheimer’s), this is the next designer surgery in 20 years. Imagine repurposing sections of your brain to carry more load. This is brain optimization down the road.

Yes. I could be reading too much into this, but I think that this assumption isn’t far off. Even beyond storage implants, this is making best use of the matter we already have. Fascinating.

%d bloggers like this: