By Anthony Han
Everyone’s wanted to learn a new language at some point. Apps like Duolingo and foreign language classes in school are dedicated to provide people with the choice to learn, but scientists have discovered a way to lower the difficulty to do so; stimulating the brain using an external device.
This outer-ear device works by using transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS), a noninvasive method to electrically stimulate the branch of the vagus nerve in the ear, called the auricular branch.
Researchers recruited 36 native English speakers to listen and differentiate between several Mandarin tones, a difficult test for those who have not been exposed to tonal languages. Two groups wore the external ear device, one differentiating between two difficult tones and the other listening to two easier tones. A third control group did not use the stimulating device and listened to all four tones.
The results showed that the stimulated group listening to the easier tones were 13% more accurate than the control and twice as fast. These effects lasted even after stimulation was terminated. However, the stimulated group differentiating between the difficult tones showed very little significant difference compared to the control.
Although these improvements are significant, the results were only present while listening to easy tones, whereas the difficult ones showed no difference between the control and experimental groups. Differentiating between tones is only a small part of learning a language, and there is no evidence that those sectors would be impacted.
This study offers more insight into how the human brain works with regard to language. It is less about improving quality of life and more about contributing to the field of neuroscience. There may come a time in the future where humans can learn a new language in a few weeks, but this study does not aim to complete that future.
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