Overview
- Researchers at New York University used a noninvasive brain-imaging method to record activity while Spanish–English bilinguals produced singular and plural noun forms.
- The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, found the same group of brain areas was recruited for grammatical adjustments in both languages.
- That network was active during speech planning even when participants applied plural rules to completely made-up words they had never seen before.
- Authors interpret the results as evidence the brain may reuse a common mechanism across languages but they note that broader claims need replication across other languages and grammar types.
- If confirmed, the finding could mean people reuse existing neural computations when learning a new language, which might make some aspects of language learning easier, though practical effects on learners remain to be demonstrated.