Researchers have discovered that speakers of four highly contrasting languages — Spanish, English, Hebrew and Chinese — show very similar patterns of brain activity during reading and speech, which suggests the underlying network for language processing might be more universal than previously understood.
At a news conference yesterday, where results of three international and interdisciplinary studies were announced, National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) psychology professor Li Jun-ren (李俊仁) said his team tracked and compared reading and speech perception of native speakers of the four languages using functional magnetic resonance imaging and found mostly identical brain activation.
“We could not tell what language a participant speaks from their brain scan, because the same brain areas are activated regardless of what language they speak. We showed, for the first time, that there could be an invariant and universal brain network for reading and speech processing regardless of linguistic differences,” Li said.
It has been a topic of debate whether brain systems could be language specific, but the research showed that both the left and right hemispheres of the brain, but particularly the left hemisphere, are activated when speakers of any of the tested languages are performing reading or speech tasks, which suggests that language processing is predominantly operated by the left hemisphere, and that there could be a universal brain system for all languages, he said.
The finding debunks a myth that Chinese languages were predominantly processed by the right hemisphere, compared with alphabetic languages processed by the left hemisphere, because Chinese was considered a pictorial language and the right hemisphere has been associated with image processing, he added.
Other studies support Li’s findings: A study conducted by National Yang Ming University neuroscience professor Kuo Wen-jui (郭文瑞) discovered that two particular neural circuits, a shape recognition system and a gesture recognition system, are similarly activated and show identical patterns of activation in Chinese speakers and French speakers.
Meanwhile, similar activation patterns in two regions of the left inferior frontal lobe were found across Chinese and French participants when they are processing complex number words, such as seven-hundred-ninety-four, which suggests these regions serve as the neural bases for forming complex number words in different languages, according to a study by National Central University neuroscience professor Denise Wu (吳嫻).
“About 150 years ago, [French physician] Paul Broca proposed that the left hemisphere is responsible for language processing. Today, our team confirmed that reading, writing and arithmetic processing is done by the left hemisphere, which is a universal phenomenon across languages. The team’s findings are to be remembered for a long time,” former minister of education Ovid Tzeng (曾志朗) said.
Phase 2 clinical trial results of the Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp’s COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday were published on the Web site of The Lancet: Respiratory Medicine, in an early preview before publication. The study paves the way for other nations to issue emergency use authorizations or produce the Medigen vaccine, given The Lancet’s credibility as a highly respected medical journal with a rigorous peer-review process, Medigen’s international affairs director Lien Chia-en (連加恩) said. Lien said that the study is important as it proposes methods for converting international units for efficacy comparisons. The methods have been used for correlating the efficacy of hepatitis B
LIABILITIES MULLED: New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi said Taipei would find out if the firm was legally registered, the guide was licensed and the weather was assessed The assets of Tian Da Local Nature Co are to be frozen after at least four people died after falling into the Beishi River (北勢溪) on an outing the company had organized on Saturday, the Taipei City Government said yesterday. Six people — two adults and four children — were washed away by a flash flood on the river in New Taipei City’s Hubaotan (虎豹潭) area. They were participating in a Nature Joy Camp outdoor activity with a group of 16 adults and 15 children led by a guide surnamed Su (蘇). As of 4:30pm yesterday, four of the missing had been
THREATS: Dismissing Beijing’s assertion that its military exercises only target Taiwanese separatists, Chiu Kuo-cheng said war has no regard for political affiliation In case Taiwan is attacked, the military will defend the nation and not stand by like “plastic toys,” Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) said yesterday at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. Chiu was responding to Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) asking him to clarify his remark last week that “the military holds to the principle that we will not fire the first shot.” Wang asked Chiu whether he meant what he said literally or that Taiwan would not start a war. “The Republic of China will not start a war,” Chiu
Taiwanese worked more hours than people in all but three other countries in the world last year, Ministry of Labor data showed. Singapore placed first in average hours worked among the 40 economies surveyed, with an average of 2,288 hours per worker last year, the data showed. The city-state was followed by Colombia with 2,172 hours — based on 2019 data — and Mexico with 2,124 hours, it showed. Taiwan came in fourth, with 2,021 hours, it showed. South Korean workers clocked the third-most hours in Asia, with 1,908 hours, followed by Japan with 1,598 hours, it showed. However, compared with 2019, the survey found
RSS