The brains of Arabic speakers are different from the brains of other languages, does this mean that the brains of Arabic speakers are the best or most distinguished? This is what the results of the study by German researchers will answer!
Where German scientists have stated that each person’s native language affects the way certain regions of the brain are interwoven, which underlies the way humans think.
According to a recent German study, researchers found a stronger connection between the cerebral hemispheres (the two parts of the brain) of Arabic speakers, and a stronger connection with the linguistic areas of the left hemisphere of German speakers, according to what was published. by the site “Deutsche Welle”.
In this context, the Arabic language requires a very high level of attention and concentration between the speaker and the listener, which means that Arabic speakers work their brains in a more complex way than speakers of a language like German. In other words, the degree of brain processing requires a faster effort to understand the Arabic language spoken by Arabic speakers.
Scientists at the German Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, led by Dr. and lead author of the research Xu Khoo-wei, monitored the white matter of the brains of 47 native Arabic speakers and 47 native German speakers.
The researchers also made sure to select monolinguals, meaning they had only one native language. The team of scientists asked the participants to lie on an MRI scanner. Scanning with this device produces high-resolution images of the brain and obtains information about the connections between nerve fibers.
Armed with this data, Alfred Anwander, a researcher in the Department of Neuropsychology at the Max Planck Institute and co-author of the study, which was recently published in the journal “NeuroImage” and on the Max Planck Institute’s website, reported that speakers of Arabic showed a stronger connection between the left and right hemispheres of the brain than speakers of German.
Anwander added: The result surprised us a lot, because we had always assumed that the way the brain processes languages in general goes in one direction around the world among speakers of different mother tongues in these different languages, but the Arabic speakers showed us another surprising thing.
As for Arabic speakers, the research team found in the X-rays that the left and right hemispheres of the brain are more strongly connected, and there was also a stronger connection between the lateral lobes of the brain, called the temporal lobe, and also in the medial part called the parietal lobe, and these brain regions are responsible for processing the pronunciation of words and understanding the meaning of the spoken language, which is what the Arabic language requires of the speaker.
The team of German scientists added that it is important to emphasize that these different neural circuits for language processing in the brain, which appear differently between speakers of Arabic and speakers of other languages, do not mean advantages or disadvantages for the speakers, adding, “These neural circuits are different only in the form of association in what Among them, it is not better in one language or worse in another.
“It would be very exciting to extend the study to other languages,” Anwander continued.
In the second stage of the study, currently underway, the researchers will analyze what happens in the brains of Arabic speakers when they learn German.
At the end of the research, the scientists hope to use the results to improve foreign language learning methods. The research team notes that depending on the type of learner and their native language, different strategies can be developed for language learning, but they stress that much more research is needed to achieve this goal.
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