{"id":1798,"date":"2014-12-05T12:43:53","date_gmt":"2014-12-05T12:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/?p=1798"},"modified":"2014-12-12T14:55:05","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T14:55:05","slug":"how-languages-affect-the-brains-pleasure-receptors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/how-languages-affect-the-brains-pleasure-receptors\/","title":{"rendered":"How Languages Affect the Brain\u2019s Pleasure Receptors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you have an addictive personality? \u00a0Do you tend to go overboard with so-called \u201cvice\u201d activities like drinking, gambling, and sex? \u00a0Recent studies are showing that you can take your cravings for instant gratification and put them to a more wholesome use; according to a team of Spanish and German scientists, the act of learning a language\u2014specifically learning new vocabulary words and using them in context\u2014lights up the same pleasure receptors of our brain as sex and drugs do.<\/p>\n

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While there have always been many different motivators for learning a new language, linguists have often suggested that the main one may be more primal than humanistic. \u00a0Scientists at the Barcelona Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute decided to do a controlled experiment to find out the biology behind the joy you feel when using newly learned words in a real-life situation. \u00a0They took 36 adults and put them through a series of mental exercises while receiving an fMRI scan. \u00a0Each subject participated in a round of gambling simulations, and then learned a group of new words via a communicative teaching method.<\/p>\n

As the team had hypothesized, the act of winning money (even simulated money) and the act of learning new vocabulary affected the same area of the brain, the ventral striatum, which is typically considered the reward center. \u00a0While language is traditionally known to stimulate the cortical region of the brain, the ventral striatum is a more basic area of our consciousness, suggesting that language-learning can be a more compulsive activity than we previously realized.<\/p>\n

Of course, not everybody learns new words with the same ease\u2014further studies have shown that the more neural connectors between the cortical area of the brain and the ventral striatum, the faster and more efficiently someone will pick up new vocabulary. \u00a0So your knack at languages may, in fact, be biologically based. \u00a0It is suspected that some people have just evolved to have a better connection between those two areas of the brain, but it can also be developed over the course of a lifetime.<\/p>\n

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This connection also suggests that learning a second language can be a highly emotional process. \u00a0Studies are in the works to link language-learning with the brain\u2019s dopamine receptors, and it has long been evident that people who are the most adept at learning languages\u2014the ones who know fourteen languages and describe a great attachment, almost a compulsion, to their linguistic pursuits\u2014are the ones who get most pleasure out of it.<\/p>\n

As with gambling, drug-taking, and having sex, language-learning can be a self-perpetuating addiction, but one that brings with it more long-term benefits and doesn\u2019t make you a bad example to any small children in the vicinity. \u00a0So if you want the thrills of the rock and roll lifestyle, but without the physiological wear and tear, why not look into learning a new language? \u00a0Send us an inquiry<\/a> to see what your options are for language courses in your area, or take one of our free online language level tests<\/a> to see which language you find most rewarding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Do you have an addictive personality? \u00a0Do you tend to go overboard with so-called \u201cvice\u201d activities like…","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,11,3,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese","category-cultural","category-observations","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1798"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1808,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions\/1808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}