Martha Curtis

Martha Curtis’ case about memories brought me another prospective in the area of adult language acquisition. According to the study, Martha suffered severe brain damage, thus a series of relentless seizures, which hindered her violin performance on stage.

Luckily, after undergoing three surgeries, she was able to play music again without disturbance; and to the doctors’ great surprise, she didn’t lose any memory related to her musical knowledge. In addition, she could memorize things better!

Doctors concluded that she suffered brain damage at an early age, measles at 3, and had practiced violin since she was young. Therefore, her brain had probably rewired its musical memory and recruited other areas so as to replace the role of the problematic right temporal lobe.

This definitely made me excited because it indicated that people can train their brain to acquire skills they desire to have even though there is some cerebral impairment. The question is: is it the same for both young children and adults?

Martha apparently started practicing violin at a very young age; what about adults, having certain cerebral degeneration, that still want to study a second language? Can they acquire it as their first language? If an individual doesn’t show severe linguistic problems in his mother tongue, shouldn’t it be presumably feasible to learn another language well?

Again, practice plays a critical role; but how much is enough? And is there any other efficient way to let long-term potentiation (LTP), a process that makes memories become encoded, work better in language acquisition? Is it possible to devise specific equipment to facilitate this? What would be a great brain exercise device for language learning?

I can’t wait to have chance collaborating with some experts and explore this fascinating world of brain and language!