By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. An Australian man has been hospitalized for more than a month in serious condition as a result of eating two garden slugs on a dare, according to Australian news media and ProMED , an online service that tracks disease outbreaks. The 21-year-old Sydney man apparently contracted a rat lungworm parasite from the slugs, which pick it up from rodent droppings. The parasite, a nematode called Angiostrongylus cantonensis, can cause fatal brain swelling. The ProMED moderator who reported the case said the life cycle of the nematode was described in Australia 50 years ago. It infects not just slugs, rats and humans but also dogs, horses, flying fox bats and marsupials like kangaroos. It can also be caught from unwashed vegetables. “We hope this will help to remind others to avoid eating raw slugs,” the moderator, Eskild Petersen, said. The disease is more common in Thailand, where koi-hoi, a dish with raw snail meat, is eaten; residents of Hawaii have been infected by eating improperly washed lettuce with tiny slugs on it. Escargots — snails baked in a garlic butter sauce — are generally safe, although they can trigger shellfish allergies. Snails “ranched” for restaurants (like those pictured above) are raised on clean feed and purged. Garden snails may contain poisons, including snail bait. There has been at least one report of people who developed erratic heart rhythms after eating stew made from snails that had eaten oleander leaves, which contain digoxin, a cardiac drug. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 15921 - Posted: 10.18.2011

by Carl Zimmer It is a shame that grammar leaves no fossils behind. Few things have been more important to our evolutionary history than language. Because our ancestors could talk to each other, they became a powerfully cooperative species. In modern society we are so submerged in words—spoken, written, signed, and texted—that they seem inseparable from human identity. And yet we cannot excavate some fossil from an Ethiopian hillside, point to a bone, and declare, “This is where language began.” Lacking hard evidence, scholars of the past speculated broadly about the origin of language. Some claimed that it started out as cries of pain, which gradually crystallized into distinct words. Others traced it back to music, to the imitation of animal grunts, or to birdsong. In 1866 the Linguistic Society of Paris got so exasperated by these unmoored musings that it banned all communication on the origin of language. Its English counterpart felt the same way. In 1873 the president of the Philological Society of London declared that linguists “shall do more by tracing the historical growth of one single work-a-day tongue, than by filling wastepaper baskets with reams of paper covered with speculations on the origin of all tongues.” A century passed before linguists had a serious change of heart. The change came as they began to look at the deep structure of language itself. MIT linguist Noam Chomsky asserted that the way children acquire language is so effortless that it must have a biological foundation. Building on this idea, some of his colleagues argued that language is an adaptation shaped by natural selection, just like eyes and wings. If so, it should be possible to find clues about how human language evolved from grunts or gestures by observing the communication of our close primate relatives. © 2011, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Keyword: Language; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15920 - Posted: 10.18.2011

By Marianne English With more than one-third of U.S. adults struggling to keep off the pounds, obesity has left its mark on Americans' waistlines and wallets. Yet when the Institute of Medicine released its recommendations for essential health benefits to include in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act recently, the term obesity was nowhere in sight. The report helps Congress dictate what health insurance companies should cover when the act goes into effect. Obesity didn't make the cut. Ambiguity surrounding the condition's causes and a lack of evidence-based medical treatments are likely to blame. But given what researchers know -- and the costs associated with the condition -- should obesity be considered a disease? Should it gain some health care coverage from insurers? A growing number of researchers think so. Typical definitions of disease include a change in a person's body that negatively affects its structure and function. Obesity not only causes structural changes in a person's fat tissue, but it also dictates how the body handles lipids, insulin and blood sugar. As a result, fat exists where it's not normally found in muscle, liver, cardiac tissue and the pancreas, interfering with organs' ability to work properly. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15919 - Posted: 10.18.2011

BOSTON — Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can now be diagnosed in children as young as 4 and as old as 18, according to the nation's largest organization of pediatricians. The new guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) expand the age range over which doctors can diagnose and manage ADHD in children, and are based on recent research; previous guidelines released in 2000 and 2001 covered children ages 6 to 12. "Treating children at a young age is important, because when we can identify them earlier and provide appropriate treatment, we can increase their chances of succeeding in school," said Dr. Mark Wolraich, a pediatrician at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and lead author of the report. The guidelines were released today in Boston at the pediatricians' annual conference. But with ADHD now the most common neurobehavioral disorder in children, some experts worry about changes that could lead to even more kids being diagnosed -- and medicated. A text-message survey of 100 U.S. pediatricians conducted by Truth On Call for msnbc.com found that 60 of them think ADHD is overdiagnosed in kids, 35 feel it’s diagnosed appropriately and 5 think it might be underdiagnosed. As of 2007, 9.5 percent of U.S. children had been diagnosed with ADHD, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. And cases of ADHD are already on the rise; between 2003 and 2007, rates of ADHD diagnoses increased 5.5 percent per year, the CDC says. © 2011 msnbc.com

Keyword: ADHD; Attention
Link ID: 15918 - Posted: 10.17.2011

By ANNE EISENBERG EVEN in the vast world of apps, Dr. Patrick J. Gagnon has one with an unusual distinction: it had to be cleared for use by the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Gagnon, a radiation oncologist, uses the app when he sees patients in his Fairhaven, Mass., office. He pulls his iPhone out of his pocket, and then he and a patient, side by side, can view images on it and discuss treatment. “It’s a nice way to go through a scan with a patient,” he said. The app he uses, called Mobile MIM, made by MIM Software, can turn an iPhone or an iPad into a diagnostic medical instrument. It allows physicians to examine scans and to make diagnoses based on magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography and other technologies if they are away from their workstations. Dr. Gagnon says the app will also prove useful when he wants to give physicians at other hospitals rapid access to images for immediate decisions. Mobile MIM is among a handful of medical apps that the F.D.A. has cleared for diagnostic use. Many others will probably appear as more smartphones and tablets make their way into the pockets of doctors’ white coats or onto their office desks. In preparation, the F.D.A. is working on guidelines for such apps, and in September it conducted a two-day public workshop for feedback. Only a small subset of the myriad health apps coming to the market will actually need the agency’s regulatory attention, said Bakul Patel, a policy adviser at the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, an F.D.A. unit in Silver Spring, Md. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 15917 - Posted: 10.17.2011

By JORGE CASTILLO PHOENIX, N.Y. — It was just another routine goal-line play in a high school football game on a Friday night. With a playoff berth on the line, Homer High School was nursing a 7-6 lead on its home field with about six minutes to play in the third quarter against a conference rival, the Phoenix Firebirds of John C. Birdlebough High School. On third down from the Phoenix 6, Homer ran a dive up the middle and was stopped short. A seemingly typical play run thousands of times in countless high school football games each weekend. There were no pounding hits or awkward takedowns. No reason for each player not to get up from the pile and return to his huddle. Yet one player remained on the field too long after the play was over. With everyone else on their feet, defensive tackle Ridge Barden was face down on the field. His coach, Jeff Charles; a doctor; and two emergency medical technicians headed onto the field to tend to him. Barden was at first groggy but responsive and coherent as the four reached him. But in minutes, his condition deteriorated. He began to moan and his eyes closed. He tried to stand, but instead quickly collapsed. Two hours later, Barden was dead. He was 16. Barden’s father, Jody, said a coroner’s report released Sunday ruled the cause of death to be a cerebral hemorrhage. The death is another in a growing list of fatal football-related head injuries. Each year, a handful of such deaths are reported across the country. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 15916 - Posted: 10.17.2011

Babies born weighing less than 4lb (1.8kg) could be more prone to developing autism than children born at normal weight, a study suggests. Writing in Pediatrics journal, US researchers followed 862 New Jersey children born at a low birthweight from birth to the age of 21. Some 5% were diagnosed with autism, compared to 1% of the general population. But experts say more research is needed to confirm and understand the link. Links between low birthweight and a range of motor and cognitive problems have been well established by previous research. But the researchers say this is the first study to establish that these children may also have a greater risk of developing autism spectrum disorders. The babies in the study were born between September 1984 and July 1987 in three counties in New Jersey. They all weighed between 0.5kg and 2kg or a maximum of about 4.4lb. At the age of 16, 623 children were screened for risk of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Of the 117 who were found to be positive in that screening, 70 were assessed again at age 21. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Autism; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15915 - Posted: 10.17.2011

By Susan Milius Even solitary creatures do better when a new place has the same old jerks next door. Stephens’ kangaroo rats, on the U.S. list of endangered species since 1988, live by themselves most of the time in plots of California grassland that they defend from nearby members of their species. When conservationists moved animals to safer homes away from development, familiar rivals relocated together fared better than kangaroo rats grouped with strangers, says conservation biologist Debra Shier of the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. This boost may come from what’s been called a “dear enemy effect,” Shier and institute colleague Ronald Swaisgood say online October 6 in Conservation Biology. Animals tend not to scrap as aggressively with familiar holders of neighboring territories as with complete strangers. Among the kangaroo rats, the researchers noted that those relocated along with their dear enemies indeed spent less time fighting and more time foraging than kangaroo rats surrounded by unfamiliar neighbors. Talk is increasing about relocating imperiled animals or plants — either from shrinking wild habitats or captive breeding centers — as a solution to conservation challenges including climate change, says Mark Stanley Price, chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Task Force on Moving Plants and Animals for Conservation Purposes. Yet it’s a complex process. “While the last 30 years have seen some spectacular species returns, there are many, often undocumented, failures,” he says. The work by Shier and Swaisgood “should prove to be an exemplary milestone in translocation biology." © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 15914 - Posted: 10.15.2011

By Tina Hesman Saey MONTREAL — Bigger, better human brains may be the result of a double dose of a gene that helps brain cells move around. At least twice in the past 3 million years, a gene called SRGAP2 has been duplicated within the human genome, says Megan Dennis of the University of Washington in Seattle. Dennis and her colleagues have now shown that extra copies of this gene may account for humans’ thicker brain cortex, the brain’s gray matter where thinking takes place. The team had previously discovered that SRGAP2 is one of 23 genes duplicated in humans but not in other primates. Dennis found that an ancient form of the gene, which is located on human chromosome 1, was partially duplicated on the same chromosome about 3.4 million years ago. That partial copy makes a shortened version of the SRGAP2 protein. Then, about 2.4 million years ago, a copy of the partial copy was created and added to the short arm of chromosome 1, Dennis reported October 13 at the International Congress of Human Genetics. But just having extra copies doesn’t mean the gene is evolutionarily important. So Dennis and her colleagues examined the duplicate genes in more than 150 people and found that the copy made 3.4 million years ago is missing in some people. But the younger version of the gene has become fixed in the human population, meaning that absolutely everyone has it. Millions of years may seem like a long time, but it is actually quite speedy for fixing duplicated genes, Dennis says. The rapid assimilation could indicate that the gene is important in human evolution. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Evolution; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15913 - Posted: 10.15.2011

By Carrie Arnold Mike (not his real name) had always been an unusual child. Even as a toddler, he had ­difficulties relating to others and making friends, and he seemed strikingly ­suspicious of other people. After he entered high school, Mike became increasingly angry, paranoid and detached. He worried that people were searching his room and his locker when he was not around. His grades plum­meted as he turned ­inward during class, sketch­ing outlandish scenes in his note­books and muttering to himself rather than listening to the instructor. Paranoia and difficulties connecting with others are signs of psychosis, a mental illness in which people lose touch with reality. Psychotic individuals usually have problems forming rational, coherent thoughts. They also may hear voices or hallucinate while believing that what they perceive is real. Often such delusions result in bizarre behavior and, in severe cases, an inability to ­manage every­day life. But a psychiatrist deemed Mike’s symptoms too mild to qualify him as psychotic. Mike obviously needed some kind of professional intervention, so he bounced among psychiatrists who could not figure out how to help him. Cases such as Mike’s have prompted some practitioners to propose the inclusion of a new psychosis risk diagnosis to the forthcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the “bible” of mental health diagnoses. To receive this diagnosis, a patient would first need to report, for example, having delusions or hallucinations about once a week (as opposed to most of the time for at least one month for clinical psychosis). In addition, either the patient or a loved one must be significantly distressed by those symptoms. The idea of including such a diagnosis in the DSM is highly controversial, but supporters argue that patients such as Mike not only need immediate help, they are at increased risk for developing full-blown psychosis, an outcome doctors might be able to prevent with early intervention. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Stress
Link ID: 15912 - Posted: 10.15.2011

by Chelsea Whyte Meat lovers, rejoice. The long-held notion that protein-rich diets are more filling appears to be true, which means that hitting the right balance between protein, carbohydrates and fat can curb overeating. Researchers from the University of Sydney, Australia, tested three diets on 22 male and female participants. All three diets were made up of the same meals and optional snacks, but modified to contain 10, 15 or 25 per cent protein. Each subject spent four days on each one. When on the 10 per cent protein diet, participants reported feeling hungrier in the 2 hours following breakfast than they were on both higher-protein diets. The menu with the least protein also caused the volunteers to snack more. From the first day to the last, participants ate a 12 per cent greater volume of food overall on this diet. "When protein in the diet is diluted by extra fat and carbohydrate, even by a small amount – something that has happened over recent decades in westernised countries – we keep eating in an attempt to attain our target level of protein," says Stephen Simpson, co-author of the study. Proteins are made up of amino acids, and circulating free amino acids are known to be important in the control of appetite, says Simpson. "There are amino-acid receptors in many places within the body, including parts of the brain known to be involved in control of feeding and hunger." Exactly how these amino acids act on the brain to suppress appetite needs investigating further, he adds. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15911 - Posted: 10.13.2011

Melissae Fellet, reporter A paralysed man has high-fived his girlfriend using a robotic arm controlled only by his thoughts (see video above). Tim Hemmes, who was paralysed in a motorcycle accident seven years ago, is the first participant in a clinical trial testing a brain implant that directs movement of an external device. Neurosurgeons at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pennsylvania implanted a grid of electrodes, about the size of a large postage stamp, on top of Hemmes's brain over an area of neurons that fire when he imagines moving his right arm. They threaded wires from the implant underneath the skin of his neck and pulled the ends out of his body near his chest. The team then connected the implant to a computer that converts specific brainwaves into particular actions. As shown in this video, Hemmes first practices controlling a dot on a TV screen with his mind. The dot moves right when he imagines bending his elbow. Thinking about wiggling his thumb makes the dot slide left. With practice, Hemmes learned to move the cursor just by visualizing the motion, rather than concentrating on specific arm movements, says neurosurgeon Elizabeth Tyler-Kabara of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, who implanted the electrodes. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 15910 - Posted: 10.13.2011

by Jessica Hamzelou HUMAN minds wander when they have nothing else to do. This is when people start to introspect, using a specific network of brain structures. The same network has now been identified in monkeys and rats, suggesting that "zoning out" might serve a key function in our survival. The findings raise questions over whether lower animals might also be capable of something akin to introspection. The default mode network (DMN) is one of about 10 networks of brain regions that are active when a person is at rest. What makes the DMN interesting is that it becomes active when a person is asked to let their mind wander, but the network's activity drops away completely as soon as that person is given an external task. This suggests that, in humans at least, the DMN is involved in self-reflection and introspective thought processing. Building on recent evidence that anaesthetised monkeys might have a similar network, Wim Vanduffel and his colleagues at the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) in Belgium collected a host of data from 15 studies which imaged the brain activity of 10 awake monkeys. By looking at the baseline brain activity measured in each project, the group was able to spot a network of brain structures that were active when the monkeys were not engaged in a task. This network looked strikingly similar to the human DMN (Journal of Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.2318-11.2011). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 15909 - Posted: 10.13.2011

By BENEDICT CAREY Techniques being used to treat psychological lapses from traumatic brain injuries, the signature wounds suffered by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, appear to be helpful, but lack rigorous scientific support, a government-appointed panel reported Tuesday after completing the most comprehensive analysis of the evidence to date. The report, completed by the Institute of Medicine at the request of the Defense Department, concluded that some specific methods — the use of special daily diaries, for instance, to improve memory — were backed by more evidence than others. But it concluded that the evidence base over all was too thin to support any guidelines for which therapies to provide to whom. Since 2009, the Pentagon has provided more than 71,000 hours of so-called cognitive rehabilitation, and its insurer, Tricare, has covered an additional 54,000 hours in private clinics for active duty, National Guard and retired service members, according to Cynthia O. Smith, a Department of Defense spokeswoman. Such rehabilitation methods have come under intense scrutiny from family members of veterans who suffered traumatic brain injuries, including those caused by nonpenetrating blasts, as well as wounds from bombs, bullets or blows to the head. Some 20 percent of service members wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered blows to the face, neck or head, and the number of brain injuries has nearly tripled in the past decade, to more than 30,000 from 11,000. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 15908 - Posted: 10.13.2011

A University of Northern B.C. professor who is studying the impact of the clinician-patient relationship on how health professionals rate pain suggests it decreases if the clinician doesn't like the patient. Pain sufferers often take issue with their treatment, which is why the research is so important, said psychology professor and pain expert Ken Prkachin. "A specific complaint being 'Nobody believes me, no one is taking me seriously,"' Prkachin described in an interview. "You really get that sense when you talk to patients, maybe people are being downgraded because they're also disliked." It means people with invisible pain — such as bad backs, as opposed to broken legs — may not get adequate treatment for the problem if the doctor disregards their feelings, he said. "A good case can be made … that is going to demoralize patients and contribute to very testy patient-professional relationships," Prkachin said. Study participants consistently rated the pain of patients associated with the negative traits, such as egotism and hostility, lower than the likeable patients. "What we're trying to do is understand what's going on there and how to change that." © CBC 2011

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 15907 - Posted: 10.13.2011

By Piercarlo Valdesolo Recent reports of a mountain lion or cougar stalking the campus of the University of Iowa prompted campus jokesters to tweet their surprise that Michelle Bachman​ was in town. A cougar, colloquially, is an attractive older woman who seeks out trysts with younger men, and to some, it seems that Bachmann fits the bill. This emphasis on appearance is nothing new for high-profile women who are anything but homely, and feminist scholars are quick to point out its potential detrimental effects on perceptions of female competence. Of course, we don’t need to consider reactions to political candidates to understand this idea. There is a well-known tension between seeing someone as, and appreciating them for, a body as opposed to a mind. At least, that’s what parents tell their daughters when their school clothes veer too far towards the revealing. Science has backed parents up on this. A recent study found that showing men pictures of sexualized women evokes less activity in areas of the brain responsible for mental state attribution—that is, the area of the brain that becomes active when we think we are looking at an entity capable of thought and planned action. Other studies have found similar results. When men see body shots of women as compared with face shots, they judge women to be less intelligent, likeable, ambitious and competent. A new study by Kurt Gray and colleagues in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, however, suggests that this kind of objectification might not cause perceivers to see women as mindless bodies but instead cause a transformation in the kind of minds that they perceive. © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Attention
Link ID: 15906 - Posted: 10.13.2011

By Rachael Rettner How fast a baby's brain grows, rather than how large it is, predicts the child's mental abilities later in life, a new study of preterm infants suggests. The faster the brain's cerebral cortex grew during the first months of life, the higher the children scored at age 6 on intelligence tests designed to measure their abilities to think, speak, plan and pay attention, the researchers found. The cerebral cortex is an outer layer of the brain that is critical for language, memory, attention and thought. The study found no relationship between the size of a baby's brain and the child's later test scores. While it's not clear whether the results would also apply to babies born full-term, researchers said the findings are helping them understand what might go wrong in the brains of preterm babies that causes many of those infants to experience cognitive problems later in life. "It points us to the fact that the period before normal birth is a critical time for brain growth," said study researcher David Edwards, a professor of neonatal medicine at Imperial College in London. Anything that disrupts this growth, including preterm birth or certain illnesses, may reduces cognitive abilities, Edwards said. © 2011 msnbc.com

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Intelligence
Link ID: 15905 - Posted: 10.13.2011

by Virginia Morell It's a scene that occurs daily among nesting colonies of Nazca boobies: A young adult bird struts over to a neighbor's chick and begins biting and pecking it, sometimes causing injuries that lead to the nestling's death. But if the chick survives, it's likely to become just like its tormentor, attacking other nestlings when it reaches maturity and perpetuating this "cycle of violence," researchers report. It's one of the first times that the cycle, which is normally used to explain child abuse in humans, has been discovered in a population of wild animals. The study appears in the October issue of The Auk. It's well known that children who suffer attacks by adults often grow up to abuse their own kids. But it's been difficult to study this cycle outside of humans or captive species, such as rhesus monkeys, that may exhibit some similar behaviors—because it is apparently rare, or at least seldom witnessed. On Española Island in the Galápagos, however, adult Nazca boobies attack chicks at an alarming rate, and the researchers say the birds' behavior offers a somewhat parallel model to that of humans. The birds are indifferent to human observers, so it's easy to spot and record the entire sequence of events, the researchers say. The sea birds' chick abuse is "one of the first things you notice; it's that obvious and disturbing," says David Anderson, an evolutionary ecologist at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and one of the study's co-authors, who has been observing the boobies since 1984. The behavior is also surprising. "You don't expect to see animals wasting time, bothering with a neighbor's chick, when it could be doing something that benefits its fitness, like finding a mate." © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 15904 - Posted: 10.13.2011

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Scientific discoveries can be serendipitous, and so it was when Jay L. Alberts, then a Parkinson’s disease researcher at Emory University in Atlanta, mounted a tandem bike with Cathy Frazier, a Parkinson’s patient. The two were riding the 2003 RAGBRAI bicycle tour across Iowa, hoping to raise awareness of the neurodegenerative disease and “show people with Parkinson’s that you don’t have to sit back and let the disease take over your life,” Dr. Alberts says. But something unexpected happened after the first day’s riding. One of Ms. Frazier’s symptoms was myographia, a condition in which her handwriting, legible at first, would quickly become smaller, more spidery and unreadable as she continued to write. After a day of pedaling, though, she signed a birthday card with no difficulty, her signature “beautifully written,” Dr. Alberts says. She also told him that she felt as if she didn’t have Parkinson’s. Impressed, Dr. Alberts, who now holds an endowed research chair at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, embarked on a series of experiments in which he had people with Parkinson’s disease ride tandem bicycles. The preliminary results are raising fascinating questions not only about whether exercise can help to combat the disease but also — and of broader import — whether intense, essentially forced workouts affect brains differently than gentler activity, even in those of us who are healthy. Scientists have known for some time that, in lab animals, forced and voluntary exercise can lead to different outcomes. Generally, mice and rats enjoy running, so if you put a running wheel in a rodent’s cage, it will hop aboard and run. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 15903 - Posted: 10.13.2011

By PERRI KLASS, M.D. Once, experts feared that young children exposed to more than one language would suffer “language confusion,” which might delay their speech development. Today, parents often are urged to capitalize on that early knack for acquiring language. Upscale schools market themselves with promises of deep immersion in Spanish — or Mandarin — for everyone, starting in kindergarten or even before. Yet while many parents recognize the utility of a second language, families bringing up children in non-English-speaking households, or trying to juggle two languages at home, are often desperate for information. And while the study of bilingual development has refuted those early fears about confusion and delay, there aren’t many research-based guidelines about the very early years and the best strategies for producing a happily bilingual child. But there is more and more research to draw on, reaching back to infancy and even to the womb. As the relatively new science of bilingualism pushes back to the origins of speech and language, scientists are teasing out the earliest differences between brains exposed to one language and brains exposed to two. Researchers have found ways to analyze infant behavior — where babies turn their gazes, how long they pay attention — to help figure out infant perceptions of sounds and words and languages, of what is familiar and what is unfamiliar to them. Now, analyzing the neurologic activity of babies’ brains as they hear language, and then comparing those early responses with the words that those children learn as they get older, is helping explain not just how the early brain listens to language, but how listening shapes the early brain. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15902 - Posted: 10.11.2011