"More Brain Power Needed for Mandarin Than English"

[Gaudio, Rudolf]

More Brain Power Needed for Mandarin Than English 
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030630/hl_nm/brain_langu
age_dc_2 

The link above is to a news story about some recently published
neurolinguistic research that found that Mandarin-speaking listeners used
both sides of their brains to perceive & interpret Mandarin speech, whereas
English speakers used only the left side to process English speech.  This
has apparently set off a lot of buzz about how Mandarin (or "Chinese") is
harder to learn than English is.

Is anyone familiar with this research?  I can't help but wonder whether, if
similar results were obtained in a study comparing, say, Yoruba and English
speakers, the media buzz would be the same.

Rudi