Traces of 'lost language' remain in brain even later in life

A new study has provided the first neural evidence that "lost languages" leave a mark on the brain, it has been revealed.

According to a new joint study by scientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, the Neuro and McGill University's Department of Psychology an infant's mother tongue creates neural patterns that the unconscious brain retains years later even if the child totally stops using the language, (as can happen in cases of international adoption.)

Lara Pierce, a doctoral candidate at McGill University, said that the infant brain forms representations of language sounds, but they wanted to see whether the brain maintains these representations later in life even if the person was no longer exposed to the language.

The study suggested that early-acquired information was not only maintained in the brain, but unconsciously influences brain processing for years, perhaps for life, potentially indicating a special status for information acquired during optimal periods of development.

This could counter arguments not only within the field of language acquisition, but across domains, that neural representations are overwritten or lost from the brain over time.

The implications of this finding are far reaching, and open the door for questions relating both to the re-learning of an early acquired, but forgotten, language or skill, as well as the unconscious influence of early experiences on later developmental outcomes.

The article, "Mapping the unconscious maintenance of a lost first language," is published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences (PNAS).