From birth, we can predict the ability to learn different languages

At birth, babies quickly learn how to communicate through cries, sounds and even laughter. The next stage is that of speech and language learning. American researchers from the University of Boston affirm that during this learning, there is a great deal of innateness in this learning. In a study published on June 5 in the journal Developmental Cognitive Neurosciencethey believe that the composition of brain matter at birth would give an indication of the degree of language skills at age five.

Studying gray matter

The composition of the brain’s white matter is thought to lay the foundation for a child’s language learning abilities in the first year of life. This acts as a connector between the billions of neurons, called gray matter, which make up brain tissue. This allows for the exchange of signals and all the different tasks and functions we need to perform, as well as all the biological processes that support us.

In addition to white matter development, scientists have long known that the environment also plays an important role in shaping a person’s language abilities. “But many uncertainties remain about whether nature or nurture is more dominant in determining white matter composition and how well a baby learns to communicate.”, assures Jennifer Zuk, lead author of the study.

Compared MRIs of babies to their capacity at 5 years old

Scientists followed dozens of children for five years. They investigated to what extent predisposed brain structure plays a role in development, how the brain develops in tandem with language, and whether environment drives progress or whether language skills are in largely something for which individuals are predisposed from the outset. To do this, they performed brain imaging on babies from 40 families during their first months. It is also the first time that scientists have used MRI to examine the relationship between brain structure and language development.

The researchers were primarily interested in the arcuate tract, a pathway that connects the two regions of the brain responsible for producing and understanding language. Using MRI, they measured white matter organization by looking at how easily water diffuses through tissue, indicating the density of the pathway. Five years later, they compared their results to the emerging linguistic abilities of each child. This was done by examining each person’s knowledge of vocabulary, their ability to identify sounds in individual words, and their ability to mix individual sounds together to understand the word they are composing.

A genetic-environment combination

The results showed that children born with higher indications of white matter organization had better language skills five years later. This suggests that communication skills may be strongly linked to brain structure in early life. “Perhaps the individual differences in white matter that we observed in early childhood could be shaped by a combination of a child’s genetics and their environment.believes Jennifer Zuk. But it’s intriguing to think about the specific factors that might lead children to more efficient white matter organization early on..”