Representation of First & Second Languages
                 in Bilingual Brains, as seen in fMRI

                 Karl H. Kim, Ph.D. & Joy  Hirsch, Ph.D.
                 Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

                     New York Neuropsychology Group
                        joint meeting with the
             Linguistics Section and the Neuroscience Section
                                 of
                    The New York Academy of Sciences

                              6:00 p.m.
                        Tuesday, March 30, 1999
                     2 East 63rd St., New York City

   When someone learns a second language, is it represented in the    
   brain in the same place as the first language or in a different    
   place?  Much may depend on how old one is when the second language  
   is learned. Studies using the new fMRI technology now supplement    
   behavioral/cognitive studies of biligualism and confirm the        
   importance of age at which bilingal ability is attained.

   However, these fMRi studies show the importance not only of age of  
   second language acquisition,m but also of which language area one  
   considers: anterior (Broca's) or posterior (Wernicke's).

   LECTURE IS AT 6:00 pm, IS FREE OF CHARGE, AND OPEN TO ALL.
   After a brief reception, supper at about 7:30; the supper is        
   optional and requires reservations by Thursday, March 25.
       Contact Bruce Soffer (212) 838-0230, ext. 426

   Academy members $22, others $27.   STUDENTS $11.

       NYNG info: F. Frank LeFever, Ph.D.

NYNG webpage: www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/6117/index.html

Academy webpage: www.nyas.org

BTW, who is into such, ever tried jumping every few minutes back and
forth between two languages like English and German or other related
languages and if making more errors watched what warps up how? Maybe
check it out.

Thanks,

Peter

Peter

SNIP <unsubstantiated criticism and disparagement>

Cij, leave Frank F. LeFever, Ph.D alone.  What's he done to you, except
his disapproval to your drug experiments [while you post]? (if I remember
correctly)

What is the goal that you wish to accomplish by the denigration of someone
who sincerely posts subject matter relating to his area of expertise?

Peter

Apparently you snipped the date without reading it:

Tuesday, March 30, 1999.

        I learned to read and write in three languages (English,
Greek, French) in first grade, at age five.  Before that I mostly
spoke only Greek at home. My immigrant parents figured, since their
Greek was at university level, they should teach me what they knew
well, and leave what they knew less well to my school. For my first
eight years, I attended a Greek-American school founded by
Columbia-EdD Helen "Koula" Tassop. Those three languages, I speak
without accent. I studied Greek a total of eight years and French for
a total of eleven. I haven't studied either very much since, but
recently, thanks to the internet and to spell-check software, I have
started improving in Greek for the first time since I stopped studying
it. (In college, I did force myself to read the New Testament in
Koine.) I speak Greek at the university level, read it at high school
level, and write it at grammar school level. Any language I have tried
to learn after adolescence, I have a bad accent in. In Japanese, I
have trouble learning the characters, but I can read the Russian
alphabet pretty easily (I picked it up from oh-so-predictable
billboards touring Bulgaria for a week when I was 14).  German I
mostly learned on my own while an aunt and an older cousin where in
Germany. My French is good enough that I can understand someone
speaking Spanish or Italian slowly, as well. I imagine with all the
translation software available (eg altavista.com let's you translate
your own text or a URL right on the web) language skills could either
improve or decline depending on one's inclination (my calculating
skills actually improved when I got my first calculator because I
picked up certain patterns - but that was also the year I was taking
the SATs). I found a lot of scientific terms (esp med) a lot easier
because of the languages (esp Greek & French) I knew. I also found it
easy to jump between programming languages (except COBOL.. I HATE
COBOL!!) if I had enough code samples instead of textbook theory. But
there were also disadvantages. Being multilingual got me excused from
learning to write effectively (in any language) as early as I should
have; Then again, something else also happened, when teachers or
employers had difficulty understanding what I had to say (or they
disagreed), they conveniently blamed my writing, an easy cop-out,
because it also covered them. I had a colleague whose parents were
Puerto Rican who would start speaking flawless French whenever someone
at work tried to speak to him in Spanish - he was right to do so
because of all the biases he would encounter.  Speak Greek with a
Greek last name and you begin to be seen as a foreigner and doors
begin to shut in your face. Then there is the danger that you begin to
speak a pidgin/creole language when you are away from genuine/current
natives - and that benefits noone - it excludes you from two societies
- both your ancestral culture and your current environment. I have
nothing against students learning additional languages (for me, they
made my mind so much more flexible and adaptible), so long as this
doesn't become a crutch preventing them from learning the language
they need to survive in the work environment - and this is
unfortunately easier said than done - Institutionalise a program and
mission creep makes it expand to things it was never intended because
it is a way to get more funding and to agitate against budget
cuts. Likewise the folks who were totally unbiased when their
self-interest wasn't threatened, but as soon as it was, suddenly, I
was this foreigner (mind you my mom's granpas had actaully been here
as early as 1885) with language problems.

                                - = -
Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Columbia'81+, Bioengineer-Financier, NYC
   BachMozart ReaganQuayle EvrytanoKastorian http://WWW.Dorsai.Org/~vjp2

   ---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---

In front of the computer I do not tend to experiment much, the one I
did about the what where and pointing out that I myself have a lot to
do with what/where stuff alone already in what I call the playground
and what he would probably irxtlwrrks cingulate whatever, and went on
about some other what/where stuff was more collecting some data about
it, censoring out all where I figured he'd be magically too many
thousands of years behind the data of Earth to understand that, and
then later making some summary for him of the stuff so he can get it
better.

I am not the type to in front of a monitor start experimenting with
sector accessing stuff to do with what/where in my brain or a brain
allowing me to vampire in the others energies and alter what/where
stuff.

With monitors on LSD I have to watch it to never range into
transcending ranges, as that suxs and system damage reports even if I
slip for just some seconds can last for over two minutes with quite
some power.

F.F.LF., Ph.D. is IMO not so daft that he has not gotten yet that
there are not just neuroshrinks on the planet, who might be into
drugging and frying the brains of others, because they are not getting
some of the basics of the psyche by cutting around in persons of other
races,
but that there are other branches, and that I am an LSD teacher.

IMO he understands ways less about LSD teaching than I about his
branch, and the joke for me was more in that with MBD due to being
born late like with me  IMO you can drug a long time and not get far,
as when what I perceived to be energy differences compared to other
people got too annoying I tried a bunch of {*filter*}, too, and most stuff
just messed up more.

(Though to my amu{*filter*}t I noticed that on some {*filter*} people seem to
assume that I am sober. Including someone who has known me for some
years calling while I was on several trips and asking me about
something serious, and when I commented after a longer conversation in
the end that it is straining for me on that stuff to listen and talk
that long, she was amazed that I was on them and said that she had not
noticed. While sober it happened several times that people mistook me
being on {*filter*}. Personally I believe that some concussion back then
made me ways more dumb than all {*filter*} I took in my life. Back then I
often did not even get simple jokes in my language anymore.)

Alone the intellect when going on about some others like Cheng and
Ken, and calling one person the name of another, censoring attempts
and displays of what I call the third emotion genator are so awesome
concerning the degree of wisdom.

And the bit about "my soandso case" is seeming so deeply to show
perception of the individual, understanding of what for me are main
emotion generator subprograms and how to alter them in a way that is
helping a person in a fast and wise way, that I find it impressive.

So much about denigration.

If you had bothered to get the whole you might have noticed that had
some point F. Frank LeFever, Ph. D., had denigrated my spelling and
language capacities at a point where I had mentioned several times
that I had had a concussion and afterwards had to basically relearn a
lot of spelling and also stuff within talking (in German and English),
and might have noticed that the drug question was a test with which I
decided if I should take him serious or not, as I could not entirely
exclude that he had not just been doing some primitive rank fighting
and playing censorer stuff back then when he mentioned it, and that
there might be actually some drug stuff that at times where there are
MBD problems that suck might be interesting.

That after I told him that I (seriously) do not believe that inside he
is far enough for mental healing, he then goes off against me taking
LSD as an LSD teacher is typical for him,
and also that he did not even get half as far listing damages LSD can
cause as I tend to when instructing newies,
and also that he obviously did not understand the Student & Journeyman
into The Temple Of The Mind series, not even till
level 3 / occipital link-through.

There are people rather damaging and maybe even killing other persons
of other races for their research,
being for damaging persons of the own race with {*filter*} and electricity,

but who are against someone using a drug among other thingies for
research on oneself where a "pope" of it if I recall right turned over
70 years and the person inventing it, said to still being taking it,
also quite old.

Such people tend to be so convincing.

Bilingual brains.

Strange case in Brain Repair, Stein, Donald G, Brailowsky, Simon, Will,
Bruno, p. 132

A German speaking man had a massive stroke in later {*filter*} life which left
him with very limited linguistic abilities. However, he could still speak
French quite well. Researchers found out that during his early 20's the man
had a deep love affair with a French woman and recalled his years in France
as being the happiest of his life. This was the only relevant info they
could find. I think they're suggesting a limbic\thalamic role here.

John.

BTW, if someone called autist has decided to like something, wether it
is throwing pencils behind the heater or repeating something else over
and over again, there are people who wisely might decide, that common
chances of that person getting bored with repeating something
that gets one their nerves  might be mind-bogglingly low.
And that therefore to switch on the own wisdom before starting the
other out on something relentlessly repeated
for maybe months to decades or forever
(and possibly even hardware in the brain changed
while at keeping doing it  after which it might be even easier to
repeat it with far less efforts)
might be more satisfactory in the end.

;-)

Long version?

Magic commmunications I prefer on "autist" stages on LSD (preferably
with telepaths who don't mind me on autist stages), in other words
stages where for long times verbal communication can be zero.
Verbal communications I often prefer in my language
with people from Berlin of a similar generation and attitudes.
If I want to be sober there or not depends on the other person and
what the whole is about.

I assume that short of totally drunk or zarked out on a micro
I'd still be ways better in verbal communication in my language with
others who are alike, then sober as a brick in an alien language with
someone of a different culture.

Try it stoned in your language with someone of your language
and sober in a few others where you are not that good
with people of that language, and watch how much you can express how
well and the rate of mistakes.Then you might get what I mean.

(Apart from that I do not exclude that I was pretty sober when I wrote
that one. Since a concussion it tends to play more a role if I bother
to read the text again and how tired I am.)