Our brain is flexible and adaptable

The brains of bilingual people do not differ in their structure, but are capable of developing differentiated strategies according to the demands placed on them by particular contexts. Three studies with the same result: Jean-Marie Annoni and his group of researchers worked with perfect bilinguals from around Fribourg and Berne as well as with patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease in order to better understand the cerebral organisation of language, with a special interest in bilingualism. The first study looks at the influence of a particular language on one's reading strategies. The researchers collaborated with Professor René Müri of the Department of Neurology at the University of Berne in order to analyse the eye movements of subjects who are perfectly bilingual in French and German. They were given an hour of reading individual words, first in one language and then in the other. Into these lists of words the researchers had also inserted meaningless words like batalu or otil. Results: in German the people tested placed their eye just a little in front of the beginning of the word, while in French they tended to place it in the middle.