Changes to the blog

In an effort to bring you more and better biolinguistic content, your friendly blog team has joined forces with the Biolinguistics Initiative Barcelona. The "news roundup" section will now be hosted there. You can read the latest edition by following this link, and be sure to check out the rest of the blog as well.

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Think twice, speak once: bilinguals process both languages simultaneously
• SD: Ability to move to a beat linked to brain's response to speech: musical training may sharpen language processing
• BBC: Moving to the rhythm 'can help language skills'
• SD: Why humans are musical
• SD: Responsive interactions key to toddlers' ability to learn language
• NYU: The signing brain: what sign languages reveal about human language and the brain (video of Karen Emmorey lecture)
• SD: Aphasia and bilingualism: using one language to relearn another
• SD: Colonizing songbirds lost sense of syntax
• SD: Understanding how infants acquire new words across cultures

Recently in the headlines

• Quanta: Evolution as opportunist
• SD: New evidence that orangutans and gorillas can match images based on biological categories
• SD: Learning a new language alters brain development
• SD: Primate calls, like human speech, can help infants form categories
• SD: Language and tool-making skills evolved at the same time
• SD: Discovery helps to unlock brain's speech-learning mechanism
• SD: Look at what I'm saying: engineers show brain depends on vision to hear
• SD: Neuroscientists show that monkeys can decide to call out or keep silent
• NS: Why your brain may work like a dictionary
• SD: Brain scans may help diagnose dyslexia
• SD: Piano fingers: how players strike keys depends on how muscles are used for keystrokes that occur before and after (comparison to coarticulation in speech)

Today's installment is less narrowly linguistic and more broadly bio than in the past. Feedback on whether this is a positive or negative development is welcome.

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Brain picks out salient sounds from background noise by tracking frequency and time
• BBC: Dolphins give each other 'names' (video)
• BBC: Dolphins 'call each other by name'
• Language Log: Dolphins using personal names, again (includes several links)
• SD: Ability to learn new words based on efficient communication between brain areas that control movement and hearing
• SD: Bird brain? Birds and humans have similar brain wiring
• Quanta: The surprising origins of life's complexity
• SD: Inner speech speaks volumes about the brain
• SD: Bilingual children have a two-tracked mind
• SD: Neandertals shared speech and language with modern humans, study suggests
• NS: First man to hear people before they speak
• SD: Why do we gesticulate?
• NYT: From the mouths of babes and birds

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Gene deletion affects early language and brain white matter
• SD: Songbirds turn on and tune up
• NS: Mind-reading monkey brains look similar to ours

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Genetics of dyslexia and language impairment unraveled
• SD: How similar are the gestures of apes and human infants?
• SD: Songbirds may give insight to nature vs. nurture
• SD: Picking up a second language is predicted by ability to learn patterns
• Science News: Dog sniffs out grammar
• SD: How bilinguals switch between languages

Recently in the headlines

• NS: Early hominins couldn't have heard modern speech
• SD: Grammar errors? The brain detects them even when you are unaware
• SD: Brain anatomy of dyslexia is not the same in men and women, boys and girls
• SD: How we decode 'noisy' language in daily life
• SD: Evolving genes lead to evolving genes: selection in European populations of genes regulated by FOXP2