Bonus 65: Language inside an MRI machine - Interview with Saima Malik-Moraleda (Patreon)

Your brain is where language - and all of your other thinking - happens. But unlike parts of your mouth, hands, and face, which are easy to observe directly, observing the brain takes special equipment. One of these tools is an MRI machine, which is a giant magnet big enough for a person to fit inside. The trick is, your blood has iron in it, and iron is magnetic, and so a huge enough magnet can pick up on which areas of your body have a tiny bit more blood flowing to them at a given time. This means we can see which areas of your brain are more active when you're doing something languagey. 

In this bonus episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch talks with Saima Malik-Moraleda, a graduate student in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology at Harvard University in Boston, USA, about some MRI language experiments that Gretchen got to be a participant in! First, we set up the MRI machine and get a baseline (by watching cartoons!). Next, we had three tasks: reading words and pseudo-words (like "big" and "bik") on a screen, remembering a sequence of little blue squares, and listening to a passage from "Alice in Wonderland" in several languages. We also talk about how most people's language centre is on the left side of the brain, except for some left-handed people...is Gretchen going to be one of them? The team needs to crunch some numbers, so we'll find out in two weeks during the next main episode!  

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

• Saima Malik-Moraleda
• Saima on Twitter 
• Alice in the Language Localizer Wonderland - for more information about the study 
• List of languages for which the study have recordings and which ones are still needed (do you speak any of them?) 
• If you happen to be in the Boston area and interested in participating in the study, you can contact Saima here 
• Dictionary of Kashmiri Imponderabilia — by Onaiza Drabu (including the word 'kaek') 

You can listen to this episode on this page, via the Patreon RSS or download the mp3. A transcript of this episode is available as a Google Doc. Lingthusiasm is also on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com or chat to us on the Patreon page. Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

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Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, and our production manager is Liz McCullough. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.