How children pick up a language: both sides used early (Humans)

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 08, 2020, 00:51 (1327 days ago) @ David Turell

A study in very young children shows, while they use the left side as in adults, they also used the right side early on:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/biology/childrens-brains-hear-language-differently/?...

"Young children use both brain hemispheres to understand language, neuroscientists say, which may explain why they appear to recover from neural injury more easily than adults.

"Previous brain scanning research and the clinical findings of language loss in patients who suffered a left hemisphere stroke have shown that, in almost all adults, sentence processing is possible only in the left hemisphere.

"However, this pattern is not established in young children, according to a team led by Elissa L Newport, from Georgetown University, US. Brain networks that localise specific tasks to one hemisphere start during childhood but are not complete until a child is about 10 or 11.

***

"The findings show that at the group level even young children showed left-lateralised language activation, they say, but a large proportion of the youngest children also showed significant activation in the corresponding right-hemisphere areas.

"In adults, the corresponding area in the right hemisphere is activated in different tasks, such as, processing emotions expressed with the voice. In young children, both hemispheres are engaged in comprehending the meaning of sentences and recognising the emotional affect."

Comment: Language development in young children is a carefully choreographed process, and it is protective of early brain injury. A carefully thought out plan to protect very young humans before civilization made life less violent. I explain this as God setting up useful protections.