Health Brief

Mind Your Languages

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MIND YOUR LANGUAGES

Learning languages makes your brain grow, according to researchers at Lund University.  The researchers used MRI scans to measure the brains before and after intensive langauge training among recruits at the Swedish Armed Forces Interpreter Academy.  They then compared their brains with those of cognitive science students, who study hard but not languages.

After a 3 month period of intensive study, the brain structure of the latter group had not changed, but specific parts of the brain of the language students grew, including the hippocampus and threee areas in the cerebral cortex.