SCIENCE LAB SCENICS : FAMILIAR PATTERNS [ 2 ]

WHERE that second language fits in a bilingual speaker's brain : Subsequent studies have found bilingual brains tend to display physical differences, such as more efficient matter and changes to the gray matter and to perform better on memory and concentration tasks.

Now scientists are probing further, to understand whether core aspects of the brain's neural network do double or triple duty to process multiple languages.

For insight, Dr. Blanco - Elorrieta's research team placed 23 bilingual Spanish and English speakers in a magnetoencephalography, or MEG, scanner and monitored brain activity as they made words singular or plural.

While lying in the scanner, the participants were shown words to be modified, such as ''boats'' or ''tuna.''

Then they heard a command - ''one'' or ''uno'' to make the word singular; '' two '' or ''dos'' to make it plural; or ''say'' or ''di'' to simply repeat the word without modifying it.

The scanner took millisecond-by-millisecond images of brain activity before, during and after each of these internal calculations.

Researchers found that the patterns of brain activity were roughly the same whether bilingual participants looked at Spanish or English words.

This was true even when words didn't have a cognate in the other language.

[ '' Taxi, '' for example, is an exact cognate, holding the same meaning in Spanish and English.]

On the whole, Dr. Blanco-Elorrieta said, a single '' grammatical engine '' in the brain appeared capable of powering several languages at once.

!WOW! thanks K.R. Callaway.