And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
Genesis 11:1
"In a large-scale functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
study, neuroscientists from MIT and Harvard University evaluated the
claim of language universality with respect to core features of its
neural architecture.
The world’s languages exhibit striking diversity, with differences
spanning the sound inventories, the complexity of derivational and
functional morphology, the ways in which the conceptual space is carved
up into lexical categories and the rules for how words can combine into
phrases and sentences.
To foster inclusivity in language research, Dr. Saima Malik-Moraleda
and her colleagues from MIT and Harvard University examined whether
there are shared brain responses across 45 languages in 12 language
families: Afro-Asiatic, Austro-Asiatic, Austronesian, Dravidian,
Indo-European, Japonic, Koreanic, Atlantic-Congo, Sino-Tibetan, Turkic,
Uralic and an isolate, Basque, which is effectively a one-language
family.
All native languages activated large areas of the left frontal, temporal and parietal cortex in the brain.
The responses of this language-related network were stronger and more
correlated in the left hemisphere of the brain than the right
hemisphere as subjects listened to different stories in their native
languages.
The network was more responsive during listening to native languages
than when performing a spatial working memory or an arithmetic task,
suggesting that this common network was selective for language
processing.
“This finding is a first step in deeper examinations of the neural
processing of different languages, which will require larger groups of
native speakers for each language,” the authors said."
SciNews
