[EDLING:2181] Mandarin: Music to the brain

[marlon_wade at HOTMAIL.COM]

This is interesting.  I wonder if the brain does similar things when speaking or cantering Hebrew.  I also wonder if this may also help explain why there if a drastic amount of fewer Chinese people who suffer from dementia versus English-speaking people. --Marlon



Mandarin: Music to the brain
IRVINE, Calif. (UPI) -- A U.S. scientist says while the left side of the brain processes language and the right side music, when Mandarin Chinese is heard, both sides are used. 

University of California-Irvine researcher Fan-Gang Zeng notes that in the English language, changes in pitch dictate the difference between a spoken statement and question, or in mood, but the meaning of the words does not change. That is different in Mandarin, in which changes in pitch affect the meaning of words. 

Zeng and colleagues studied brain scans of people as they listened to spoken Mandarin. The scientists discovered the brain processes the music, or pitch, of the words first in the right hemisphere before the left side of the brain processes the semantics, or meaning, of the information. 

The finding, Zeng says, shows language processing is more complex than previously thought, and it provides clues to why people who use auditory prosthetic devices have difficulty understanding Mandarin. 

The study appears in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/edling/attachments/20061214/99fc919b/attachment.htm>