Why being bilingual works wonders for your brain

Gaia Vince

Cartoon depiction of the Tower of Babel

Interesting article discussing bilingualism and why you should pick up a language or two more than you already know. -JR

In a cafe in south London, two construction workers are engaged in cheerful banter, tossing words back and forth. Their cutlery dances during more emphatic gesticulations and they occasionally break off into loud guffaws. They are discussing a woman, that much is clear, but the details are lost on me. It’s a shame, because their conversation sounds fun and interesting, especially to a nosy person like me. But I don’t speak their language.

Out of curiosity, I interrupt them to ask what language they are speaking. They both switch easily to English, explaining that they are South Africans and had been speaking Xhosa. In Johannesburg, where they are from, most people speak at least five languages, says one of them, Theo Morris. For example, Morris’s mother’s tongue is Sotho, his father’s is Zulu; he learned Xhosa and Ndebele from his friends and neighbours and English and Afrikaans at school. “I went to Germany before I came here, so I also speak German,” he adds.

Was it easy to learn so many languages? “Yes, it’s normal,” he laughs.

He’s right. Around the world, more than half of people – estimates vary from 60-75% – speak at least two languages. Many countries have more than one official national language – South Africa has 11. People are increasingly expected to speak, read and write at least one of a handful of “super” languages, such as English, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish or Arabic, as well. So to be monolingual, as many native English speakers are, is to be in the minority and perhaps to be missing out.

Multilingualism has been shown to have many social, psychological and lifestyle advantages. Moreover, researchers are finding a swath of health benefits from speaking more than one language, including faster stroke recovery and delayed onset of dementia.

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Children's academic performance and sleep

This article explains how academic performance in children is affected by their sleep.

Making sure school-aged kids get to sleep at a regular hour is often a struggle for parents. But a study by researchers at McGill University and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Montreal suggests it's well worth the effort: the researchers found that a good night's sleep is linked to better performance in math and languages -- subjects that are powerful predictors of later learning and academic success.

In findings published recently in the journal Sleep Medicine, the researchers reported that "sleep efficiency" is associated with higher academic performance in those key subjects. Sleep efficiency is a gauge of sleep quality that compares the amount of actual sleep time with the total time spent in bed.

While other studies have pointed to links between sleep and general academic performance, the Montreal scientists examined the impact of sleep quality on report-card grades in specific subjects. The upshot: with greater sleep efficiency, the children did better in math and languages -- but grades in science and art weren't affected.

"We believe that executive functions (the mental skills involved in planning, paying attention, and multitasking, for example) underlie the impact of sleep on academic performance, and these skills are more critical in math and languages than in other subjects," says Reut Gruber, a clinical child psychologist who led the study. Low academic achievement in children is a common and serious problem that affects 10-20 % of the population. "Short or poor sleep is a significant risk factor for poor academic performance that is frequently ignored," says Gruber, who is a researcher at the Douglas Institute and professor in McGill's Department of Psychiatry.

Gruber's research team, in collaboration with the Riverside School Board in Saint-Hubert, Quebec, studied 75 healthy children between 7 and 11 years of age. The children's nighttime sleep was monitored by actigraphy, which uses a wristwatch-like device to evaluate sleep by measuring movements. "We averaged the data over five nights to build the children's habitual sleep patterns and correlated the data with their report-card grades," Gruber says.

The takeaway for parents

The findings underscore the importance of identifying sleep issues that may otherwise go unnoticed, Gruber says. That doesn't mean parents need to rush out and have their kids tested at sleep clinics -- but it does point to a need for pediatricians to incorporate questions about sleep into routine checkups, she adds.

"I think many kids might have some sleep issues that nobody is aware of," she says. "And if the pediatrician doesn't ask about it, we don't know that it's there. Regular screening for possible sleep issues is particularly important for students who exhibit difficulties in math, languages or reading."

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Language and attention gene variations in those with ADHD

A study shows that in those with ADHD, gene variations are seen specifically in language and attention.

Are deficits in attention limited to those with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or is there a spectrum of attention function in the general population? The answer to this question has implications for psychiatric diagnoses and perhaps for society, broadly.

A new study published in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry, by researchers at Cardiff University School of Medicine and the University of Bristol, suggests that there is a spectrum of attention, hyperactivity/impulsiveness and language function in society, with varying degrees of these impairments associated with clusters of genes linked with the risk for ADHD.

Viewing these functions as dimensions or spectrums contrasts with a traditional view of ADHD as a disease category.

To answer this question, researchers led by senior author Dr. Anita Thapar used genetic data from patients with ADHD as well as data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). The ALSPAC is based in England and is a large, ongoing study of parents and children followed since birth in the early '90s.

They created polygenic risk scores -- a 'composite' score of genetic effects that forms an index of genetic risk -- of ADHD for 8,229 ALSPAC participants.

They found that polygenic risk for ADHD was positively associated with higher levels of traits of hyperactivity/impulsiveness and attention at ages 7 and 10 in the general population. It was also negatively associated with pragmatic language abilities, e.g., the ability to appropriately use language in social settings.

"Our research finds that a set of genetic risks identified from UK patients with a clinical diagnosis of childhood ADHD also predicted higher levels of developmental difficulties in children from a UK population cohort, the ALSPAC," said Thapar.

First author Joanna Martin added, "Our results provide support at a genetic level for the suggestion that ADHD diagnosis represents the extreme of a spectrum of difficulties. The results are also important as they suggest that the same sets of genetic risks contribute to different aspects of child development which are characteristic features of neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD and autism spectrum disorder."

"It may be the case that at some point polygenic risk scores may, in conjunction with other clinical information, help to identify children who will struggle in school and other demanding contexts due to attention difficulties," said Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "The objective of this type of early identification would be to provide children who are at risk for difficulties with support so that problems at school may be prevented."

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Personalized interventions help autistic children

Personalized interventions help improve communication in children with autism.

A UCLA-led study has found that the communication skills of minimally verbal children with autism can be greatly improved through personalized interventions that are combined with the use of computer tablets.

The three-year study examined different approaches to improving communication abilities among children with autism spectrum disorder and minimal verbal skills. Approximately 30 percent of children with ASD overall remain minimally verbal even after years of intervention.

UCLA professor Connie Kasari, the paper's senior author, worked with researchers at Vanderbilt University and the Kennedy Krieger Institute. They found that children's language skills greatly improved when spoken- and social-communication therapy was tailored based on their individual progress and delivered using computer tablets.

The trial involved 61 children with ASD, ages 5 to 8. For six months, each child received communication therapy focusing on social communication gestures, such as pointing, as well as play skills and spoken language.

Half of the children were randomly selected to also use speech-generating applications on computer tablets for at least half of the time during their sessions. The tablets were programmed with audio clips of words the children were learning about during their therapy sessions and images of the corresponding objects. Working with a therapist, the child could tap a picture of a block, for example, and the tablet would play audio of the word "block." The researchers found that children who had access to the tablets during therapy were more likely to use language spontaneously and socially than the children who received the communication intervention alone -- and that incorporating the tablets at the beginning of the treatment was more effective than introducing it later in the therapy.

"It was remarkable how well the tablet worked in providing access to communication for these children," said Kasari, professor of human development and psychology in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and professor of psychiatry at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. "Children who received the behavioral intervention along with the tablet to support their communication attempts made much faster progress in learning to communicate, and especially in using spoken language."

Researchers also conducted follow-up visits with the children three months after the initial study period and found that their improvement had been maintained during that time. The study was the first ASD research to use a sequential multiple assignment randomized trial, or SMART, design. The approach, which enables researchers to tailor interventions according to how each child in the study responds, was designed by Daniel Almirall and Susan Murphy, biostatisticians at the University of Michigan who were members of the research team. It also was the first randomized, controlled trial on this underserved population of children to use a computer tablet combined with an effective behavioral intervention.

Other study authors were Rebecca Landa of Kennedy Krieger and Johns Hopkins University, and Ann Kaiser of Vanderbilt. The study was funded by a High Risk High Impact grant from the Autism Speaks Foundation.

The findings were published in the June issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

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Language problems more common in children with ADHD

A study found that children with ADHD are more likely to have language problems.

Children who have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder are nearly three times more likely to have language problems than kids without ADHD, according to new research.

And those language difficulties can have far-reaching academic consequences, the study found.

The study, published online April 21 in Pediatrics, looked at 6- to 8-year-olds with and without ADHD in Australia.

"We found that 40 percent of children in the ADHD group had language problems, compared to 17 percent of children in the 'control' group," said Emma Sciberras, a clinical psychologist and post-doctoral research fellow at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Victoria, Australia. "Rates of language problems were similar in boys and girls with ADHD," she added.

Children with ADHD commonly have trouble with school performance and social functioning. The impact that language problems might have on these factors hasn't been well-studied, the study authors noted.

"The differences in academic functioning between children with ADHD and language problems, compared to those with ADHD alone, were quite large and clinically meaningful," said Sciberras.

Language problems refer to spoken language -- both receptive and expressive language. Receptive language is the ability to listen and understand what's being said; expressive is the ability to speak and be understood.

In a separate study in the same issue of the journal, Sciberras and her colleagues looked at almost 400 children with ADHD, aged 5 to 13, and found almost two-thirds had one or more anxiety disorders.

When children with ADHD had two or more anxiety disorders -- this was true for one-third of the kids -- their quality of life, behavior and daily functioning suffered, the researchers said.

"It is very common for children with ADHD to experience additional difficulties," said Sciberras. "Both of these studies demonstrate that the additional difficulties that go along with ADHD, in this case anxiety and language problems, can make daily functioning even harder for children with ADHD."

The language study included 179 children diagnosed with ADHD and 212 without the attention disorder. Fewer than half of the children with ADHD were taking medications to help control their symptoms.

After adjusting for sociodemographic factors and other conditions, such as autism spectrum disorders, the researchers found that the risk of language problems was 2.8 times higher in children with ADHD.

When the researchers looked at how those language problems affected school work, they found lower math, reading and academic scores.

However, the researchers didn't find that language problems had an impact on social functioning.

"We were surprised that language problems were not associated with poorer social functioning for children with ADHD," Sciberras said. "It could be that children with ADHD are already experiencing poorer social functioning due to other factors including their ADHD symptoms or other associated difficulties."

However, Sciberras cautioned that language troubles might become more problematic as these kids get older because social relationships get more complex with age.

One outside expert said the study is a good reminder for parents and physicians.

"If a child has ADHD and they're struggling in school, even though their ADHD symptoms are well-controlled, in addition to getting tested for learning disabilities, they should also be looked at for language difficulties as well. And that's not something we always think of," said Dr. Bradley Berg, medical director of McLane Children's Pediatrics at Baylor Scott & White Healthcare in Round Rock, Texas.

Whether speech-language interventions will help the youngsters with ADHD isn't clear, however.

Berg also pointed out that this issue is a "chicken-and-egg" problem. "Do these kids have a language disorder that's causing them to not understand what's going on at school and that's making them restless and fidgety because they're bored. Or do they have ADHD and that's causing difficulty understanding the language. Or is there something going on in an area of the brain that creates both of these problems?" he said. "We don't know."

It's possible that the findings from this Australian study might not translate to a U.S. population. For one thing, medication trends might differ, Berg said.

For children with ADHD who also suffer anxiety, Sciberras said medications might help, and a type of psychotherapy called cognitive behavioral therapy could also be useful. The researchers are currently conducting a study to treat anxiety in children with ADHD.

"If parents are concerned that their child with ADHD has anxiety, language or any other additional difficulties that are not currently being managed, we encourage them to discuss their concerns with their child's treating clinician," she said.

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Genetic link between autism and language impairment

Scientists have found a genetic link between autism and language impairment showing these two conditions may result from a common genetic factor.

In the first molecular genetic study of families with a history of both language impairment and autism, scientists may have uncovered a shared origin for the two conditions, an important step toward explaining why some cases of autism are accompanied by language difficulties and others are not. The study, a collaboration of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital with experts at Rutgers University, indicates that a disorder called specific language impairment -- one of the most common developmental delays in children -- may be caused by the same genetic variants that lead to language difficulties in some children with autism. The findings are published Oct. 30 in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

As many as two-thirds of individuals with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) also have language impairments, which can range from mild limitations to complete non-verbal behavior. However, the remaining third may have normal or even above average language abilities. To investigate whether specific language impairment and language-impaired autism cases are caused by the same genetic variants, researchers examined the genetic code of 79 families with a history of both conditions.

Using a genome-wide scan and a series of language tests, the researchers identified two new genetic links for language impairment in these families: 15q23¬-26 and 16p12. Each of these new links is jointly related to language-impaired ASD and non-ASD related specific language impairment, suggesting a single cause for both issues.

"A genetic cause of language impairment may help explain why some kids with ASD have language impairments and others don't, as well as why some members of a family have language impairment only and others have ASD as well," says Christopher W. Bartlett, PhD, principal investigator in the Battelle Center for Mathematical Medicine at Nationwide Children's and lead author of the study. The research is part of a long-term collaboration between scientists at Nationwide Children's and Rutgers, initiated by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to Linda M. Brzustowicz, MD, professor of the Department of Genetics at Rutgers and senior investigator on the project.

Language impairment is not part of the diagnostic definition of ASD. And according to Dr. Bartlett, this study raises the question of whether language impairment is actually a dissociable trait in at least some forms of ASD.

"There is nothing about autism that dictates that language impairment has to occur," says Dr. Bartlett, who also is an assistant professor of pediatrics at The Ohio State University School of Medicine. "In this study, we demonstrated a shared mechanism between the two disorders. Language problems and ASD are complicated and have numerous genetic factors, but we think that many genetic factors related to communication could be the same for specific language impairment and language-impaired autism."

The genetic variations appear to be relevant to both disorders and may indicate a greater level of genetic predisposition for impairments in language ability among individuals with and without ASD in those families.

In an earlier study, the researchers found similarities in language deficit type and severity between language-impaired non-ASD and language-impaired ASD individuals in the same family. The behavioral genetics study, published in Biological Psychiatry, found that the same genes active in specific language impairment appear in ASD, but their effect is amplified in ASD. That finding, coupled with this new research, suggests that the two disorders may be on an etiological continuum.

"If further research confirms a genetic link between language impairment and ASD, then we may be able to find out why some family members only develop language impairment while others develop autism," says Dr. Bartlett. "But most of all, we want to know why there is such a range in communication abilities in children with autism -- why so many children have language difficulties when it's not required for the diagnosis."

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Word tests help predict abilities in young children with autism

Giving word tests to young children with autism helps predict how their future abilities with language will develop.

Early brain responses to words may help predict future abilities in children with autism, a new study suggests.

"We showed that a simple measure of how the brain responds to a familiar word taken at 2 years of age was a strong predictor of children's language, social and cognitive abilities ... at 6 years of age," said study co-author Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer at the advocacy group Autism Speaks.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired communication, difficulty with social interactions and repetitive behaviors. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in 88 U.S. children has some form of autism, which can range from mild to severe.

"In this study, we were interested in understanding why some children with autism make rapid progress whereas others progress more slowly," Dawson said. "For example, many children with autism are able to develop spoken language, whereas about 20 percent to 30 percent remain minimally verbal or nonverbal.

"Recent studies have shown that nonverbal children can be helped to develop spoken language if they are given special alternative devices -- such as an iPad or other speech-generating device -- as part of their early intervention program," Dawson added. "But we don't know how to identify which children are likely to need extra help."

The study, published May 29 in the journal PLoS ONE, involved 44 children, all of whom were 2 years old. Twenty-four had autism and 20 did not. The children were asked to listen to a mix of familiar and unfamiliar words while wearing sensors, which measured their brain responses.

The children with autism were divided into two groups based on the level of their social impairment. The brain responses of the children with autism with milder symptoms were similar to the brain responses of the children who did not have autism, the researchers found. These children had a strong response to known words in a specific area of the left side of the brain called the temporal parietal region, which is responsible for language.

This suggests that children with less severe symptoms can process words in much the same way as typically developing children, the study authors said.

Children with more severe social impairments, however, showed brain responses more broadly over the right hemisphere. The researchers said this is not usually seen in healthy children of any age.

The children's language skills, thinking abilities and social and emotional development also were assessed at age 2 and again at ages 4 and 6.

Over time and with intensive treatment, the children with autism improved on the behavioral tests, but individual gains varied widely, the researchers found. The more the autistic children's brain responses resembled those of typically developing children, the greater the improvement in their skills by age 6.

"Essentially, children who showed a different brain response from the left hemisphere to a known versus unknown word made better progress by age 6," Dawson said. "This measure may help us identify early on which children could benefit from extra help, such as an alternative communication device, so that they can have the best possible long-term outcome."

Study lead author Patricia Kuhl, of the University of Washington in Seattle, said in a university news release: "We think this measure signals that the 2-year-old's brain has reorganized itself to process words.

"This reorganization depends on the child's ability to learn from social experiences," said Kuhl, who is co-director of the university's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences. She said, however, that researchers are still a long way from identifying a brain marker that can help predict future autism diagnoses.

In previous studies, Kuhl found that social interactions promote language learning in babies. For children with autism, social impairments prevent them from picking up on social cues, the researchers said. As a result, they pay attention to objects and other things rather than people.

"Social learning is what most humans are about," Kuhl said. "If your brain can learn from other people in a social context, you have the capability to learn just about anything."

Kuhl thinks the latest findings could lead to measures that might help identify children at risk for autism by the age of 1 year or younger. "This line of work may lead to new interventions applied early in development, when the brain shows its highest level of neural plasticity," she said.

One autism expert who reviewed the study, however, said it's too early to say such a test is imminent.

"The authors describe their findings as having only 'theoretical implications' at this time," said Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York, in New Hyde Park.

"Although this study may be of some interest to parents and clinicians who care for children with an autism spectrum disorder, there is no clinical justification for parents to pursue any specialized [brain] testing at this time," he said.

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Localizing Language in the Brain: Study Pinpoints Areas of the Brain Used Exclusively for Language

New research from MIT suggests that there are parts of our brain dedicated to language and only language, a finding that marks a major advance in the search for brain regions specialized for sophisticated mental functions.

Functional specificity, as it's known to cognitive scientists, refers to the idea that discrete parts of the brain handle distinct tasks. Scientists have long known that functional specificity exists in certain domains: In the motor system, for example, there is one patch of neurons that controls the fingers of your left hand, and another that controls your tongue. But what about more complex functions such as recognizing faces, using language or doing math? Are there special brain regions for those activities, or do they use general-purpose areas that serve whatever task is at hand?

Language, a cognitive skill that is both unique to humans and universal to all human cultures, "seems like one of the first places one would look" for this kind of specificity, says Evelina Fedorenko, a research scientist in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and first author of the new study. But data from neuroimaging -- especially functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures brain activity associated with cognitive tasks -- has been frustratingly inconclusive. Though studies have largely converged on several areas important for language, it's been hard to say whether those areas are exclusive to language. Many experiments have found that non-language tasks seemingly activate the same areas: Arithmetic, working memory and music are some of the most common culprits.

But according to Fedorenko and her co-authors -- Nancy Kanwisher, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, and undergraduate student Michael Behr -- this apparent overlap may simply be due to flaws in methodology, i.e., how fMRI data is traditionally gathered and analyzed. In their new study, published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they used an innovative technique they've been developing over the past few years; the new method yielded evidence that there are, in fact, bits of the brain that do language and nothing else.

Read more at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110830102554.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmind_brain+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Mind+%26+Brain+News%29