Professor Ping Li fromPennStateUniversityvisited our center last week. As a Yunshan chair professor, he gave a talk about the recent works from his lab (Brain, Language and Computation Lab, www.blclab.org) on the afternoon of December 16, 2014. His talk, entitled “Neuroplasticity of second language learning: learning induced brain changes”, focused on the neuroplasticity of second language learning.

In this talk, Prof. Li mainly talked about the functional and structural changes of the brain when one learns a second language. His BLC lab atPennStateUniversitypublished a few neuroimaging papers on American speakers learning Chinese or Spanish. By comparing those learners’ brain activities before and after language training, they examined second language learning induced changes in brain activation, brain connectivity and even brain structures. Their studies found that after six-week training session, with the improved behavioral performance in the learned new language, the learners also showed significant changes in functional brain activation as well as the gray matter density. Prof. Li also explained the rationale for brain connectivity and structure analyses, which was very helpful for the audience who are interested with psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research. Finally Prof. Li talked about second language learning in virtual environment. In the virtual environment, learners can approach the object (such as animals and food) in the same way as in real life and learn the sound and meaning of the objects. By comparing this learning method and the traditional word-sound learning methods, they found significant different neural mechanismsunderlying the two different learning methods. 

The talk lasted about two hours. Prof. Li's talk provides a summary of recent neuroimaging findings on second language learning and its neural mechanism. As second language learning is one of the three disciplines of our center, this talk inspired the audience a lot.