Language Acquisition News

June 28, 2025

Top Headlines

The Brain’s Sweet Spot: How Criticality Could Unlock Learning, Memory—and Prevent Alzheimer’s

June 25, 2025 — Our brains may work best when teetering on the edge of chaos. A new theory suggests that criticality a sweet spot between order and randomness is the secret to learning, memory, and adaptability. ...

Brain-Computer Interface Restores Real-Time Speech in ALS Patient

June 12, 2025 — A team at UC Davis has made a major leap in neurotechnology, enabling a man with ALS to speak again through a brain-computer interface that converts thoughts into speech in real time. Unlike prior systems that translated neural signals into text, ...

Dancing Brainwaves: How Sound Reshapes Your Brain Networks in Real Time

June 2, 2025 — Listening to sound doesn t just trigger brain activity it reshapes your brain s internal networks in real time. Scientists have unveiled a powerful new imaging method, FREQ-NESS, that traces how different sound frequencies ripple through brain ...

Singing to Babies Improves Their Mood

May 30, 2025 — Singing to your infant can significantly boost the baby's mood, according to a recent study. Around the world and across cultures, singing to babies seems to come instinctively to caregivers. Now, new findings support that singing is an easy, safe, ...

Sustained in the Brain: How Lasting Emotions Arise from Brief Stimuli, in Humans and Mice

May 29, 2025 — Humans and mice share persistent brain-activity patterns in response to adverse sensory experience, scientists find, opening a window to our emotions and, perhaps, neuropsychiatric ...

Are Groovy Brains More Efficient?

May 21, 2025 — The smallest grooves on the brain's surface, unique to humans, have largely been ignored by anatomists, but recent studies show that they're related to cognitive performance, including face recognition and reasoning ability. A new study shows that ...

The Key to Spotting Dyslexia Early Could Be AI-Powered Handwriting Analysis

May 14, 2025 — A new study outlines how artificial intelligence-powered handwriting analysis may serve as an early detection tool for dyslexia and dysgraphia among young ...

The Origins of Language

May 9, 2025 — Wild chimpanzees alter the meaning of single calls when embedding them into diverse call combinations, mirroring linguistic operations in human language. Human language, however, allows an infinite generation of meaning by combining phonemes into ...

Neuroscientists Pinpoint Where (and How) Brain Circuits Are Reshaped as We Learn New Movements

May 7, 2025 — Brain researchers have identified a bridge between the thalamus and the cortex as the key area that is modified during motor learning functions. They found that such learning does much more than ...

Piecing Together the Brain Puzzle

May 7, 2025 — Our brain is a complex organ. Billions of nerve cells are wired in an intricate network, constantly processing signals, enabling us to recall memories or to move our bodies. Making sense of this complicated network requires a precise look into how ...

How Is Handedness Linked to Neurological Disorders?

May 5, 2025 — The fact that left-handedness resp. mixed-handedness are strikingly common in patients with certain neurological disorders such as autism spectrum disorders is a frequently reported observation in medical practice. The reason why handedness is ...

Advancing AI for Diverse Applications in Manufacturing, Business and Education

May 2, 2025 — Large language models (LLMs) are at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) and have been widely used for conversational interactions. However, assessing the personality of a given LLM remains ...

Latest Headlines

updated 2:04pm EDT

Machine Learning Brings New Insights to Cell's Role in Addiction, Relapse

May 1, 2025 — Researchers have applied object recognition technology to track changes in brain cell structure and provide new insights into how the brain responds to heroin use, withdrawal and ...

New 'Hidden in Plain Sight' Facial and Eye Biomarkers for Tinnitus Severity Could Unlock Path to Testing Treatments

May 1, 2025 — Researchers have identified biomarkers for tinnitus severity in subtle facial movements and pupil dilation that can be captured on video recordings. ...

Trouble Hearing in Noisy Places and Crowded Spaces? Researchers Say New Algorithm Could Help Hearing Aid Users

Apr. 30, 2025 — BU researchers develop a brain-inspired algorithm that can help people with hearing loss pick out conversations in noisy, crowded ...

By 15 Months, Infants Begin to Learn New Words for Objects, Even Those They've Never Seen

Apr. 23, 2025 — A new study by developmental scientists offers the first evidence that infants as young as 15 months can identify an object they have learned about ...

Novel Treatment Approach for Language Disorder Shows Promise

Apr. 21, 2025 — Neuroscientists have developed a new treatment approach for a language disorder that combines traditional speech therapy with noninvasive electrical stimulation of the brain. Brain stimulation helped ...

Simulate Sound in 3D at a Finer Scale Than Humans Can Perceive

Apr. 15, 2025 — Ambisonic rendering is a way to simulate the precise locations of sounds in 3D, and an ambisonics algorithm has allowed researchers to create rich virtual 'soundscapes.'Researchers decided to test ...

A Unique Sound Alleviates Motion Sickness

Apr. 10, 2025 — A research group has discovered that using a device that stimulates the inner ear with a specific wavelength of sound reduces motion sickness. Even a single minute of stimulation with a unique sound, ...

Scientists Complete Largest Wiring Diagram and Functional Map of the Brain to Date

Apr. 9, 2025 — From a tiny sample of tissue no larger than a grain of sand, scientists have come within reach of a goal once thought unattainable: building a ...

Common Phrases, Not Fancy Words, Make You Sound More Fluent in a Foreign Language

Apr. 3, 2025 — Fluency in a foreign language is often thought to be about speaking quickly and using advanced vocabulary. However, researchers reveal that speakers ...

How Movement Affects the Way the Brain Processes Sound and Sight

Mar. 27, 2025 — A research team has uncovered a fundamental principle of how the brain prioritizes vision and hearing differently depending on whether we are still or in motion. The study provides new insights into ...

What Does 'That' Mean in 'Did You See That?'

Mar. 25, 2025 — What goes through your mind when someone asks 'Did you see that?' A study shows that children and adults process ambiguous information like 'that' differently. While children ...

Brain Imaging Reveals Surprises About Learning

Mar. 19, 2025 — By revealing for the first time what happens in the brain when an animal makes a mistake, researchers are shedding light on the holy grail of neuroscience: the mechanics of how we learn. The team ...

To the Brain, Esperanto and Klingon Appear the Same as English or Mandarin

Mar. 18, 2025 — New research finds the brain's language-processing network also responds to artificial languages such as Esperanto and languages made for TV, such as Klingon on 'Star Trek' and High ...

When Did Human Language Emerge?

Mar. 18, 2025 — Humans' unique language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago, according to a survey of genomic evidence. As such, language might have entered social use 100,000 years ...

Bridging Nature and Nurture: Study Reveals Brain's Flexible Foundation from Birth

Mar. 17, 2025 — By studying never-before-seen details of brain connectivity in human infants, researchers have identified how a balance of innate structure and flexible learning produces our remarkably organized ...

It's Not Just What You Say -- It's Also How You Say It

Mar. 3, 2025 — First study to reveal the brain encodes pitch accents separately from the sounds that make up words. Heschl's gyrus region of the brain, an earlier stage of auditory processing, plays a much ...

How Many Languages Can You Learn at the Same Time? -- Ghanaian Babies Grow Up Speaking Two to Six Languages

Feb. 28, 2025 — Africa is a multilingual continent and many adults speak several languages fluently. An empirical study by a psycholinguist now shows that the roots of this multilingualism can be found in infancy: ...

We Need a New Definition of Dyslexia, Research Says

Feb. 25, 2025 — A new definition of dyslexia is needed to more accurately describe the learning disorder and give those struggling with dyslexia the specific support they require, says new ...

Like Human Brains, Large Language Models Reason About Diverse Data in a General Way

Feb. 19, 2025 — Researchers find large language models process diverse types of data, like different languages, audio inputs, images, etc., similarly to how humans reason about complex problems. Like humans, LLMs ...

A Single Protein May Have Helped Shape the Emergence of Spoken Language

Feb. 18, 2025 — How much does the evolution of human speech owe to one amino ...

Study Maps New Brain Regions Behind Intended Speech

Feb. 13, 2025 — Imagine seeing a furry, four-legged animal that meows. Mentally, you know what it is, but the word 'cat' is stuck on the tip of your tongue. This phenomenon, known as Broca's aphasia ...

The Complicated Question of How We Determine Who Has an Accent

Feb. 13, 2025 — How do you tell if someone has a particular accent? It might seem obvious: You hear someone pronounce words in a way that is different from 'normal' and connect it to other people from a ...

Adults Can Learn Absolute Pitch: New Research Challenges Long-Held Musical Belief

Feb. 12, 2025 — It's been a long-held belief that absolute pitch -- the ability to identify musical notes without reference -- is a rare gift reserved for a select few with special genetic gifts or those who ...

How Does the Brain Differentiate New Stimuli from Old Ones?

Feb. 10, 2025 — A study sheds light on how networks in the brain detect new information, offering insight into disorders like ...

Electroencephalography May Help Guide Treatments for Language Disorders

Feb. 6, 2025 — Electroencephalography (EEG) may offer a more accessible alternative to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) for guiding transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) when treating aphasia. ...

Scientists Discover Brain Mechanism That Helps Us Overcome Fear

Feb. 6, 2025 — Researchers have unveiled the precise brain mechanisms that enable animals to overcome instinctive fears. The study in mice could have implications for developing therapeutics for fear-related ...

Sound Is a Primary Issue in the Lives of Skateboarders, Study Shows

Jan. 31, 2025 — Sound plays a significant and often poignant part of skateboarders' relationship with their sport, a new study ...

A Hearing Aid for ... Your Nose?

Jan. 30, 2025 — Scientists have discovered a feedback loop in the brain's odor center that seems to put smells and sounds into context. The feedback loop may help animals adjust their behaviors in response to ...

The Benefits of Speaking Multiple Languages

Jan. 29, 2025 — New psychology research indicates that multilingual children may have enhanced executive function and perspective taking ...

Towards a New Generation of Human-Inspired Language Models

Jan. 28, 2025 — Can a computer learn a language the way a child does? A recent study sheds new light on this question. The researchers advocate for a fundamental revision of how artificial intelligence acquires and ...