Using mechanical tools improves our language skills, study finds

[JudyM]

Our ability to understand the syntax of complex sentences is one of the most difficult language skills to acquire. In 2019, research had revealed a correlation between being particularly proficient in tool use and having good syntactic ability. A new study, by researchers from Inserm, CNRS, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and Université Lumière Lyon 2 in collaboration with Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, has now shown that both skills rely on the same neurological resources, which are located in the same brain region. Furthermore, motor training using a tool improves our ability to understand the syntax of complex sentences and -- vice-versa -- syntactic training improves our proficiency in using tools. These findings could be applied clinically to support the rehabilitation of patients having lost some of their language skills.
…
Research suggests that brain areas, which control certain linguistic functions, such as the processing of word meanings, are also involved in controlling fine motor skills. However, brain imaging had not provided evidence of such links between language and the use of tools. Paleo-neurobiology[1] has also shown that the brain regions associated with language had increased in our ancestors during periods of technological boom, when the use of tools became more widespread.
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In order to explore the subject in greater depth, the same team, in collaboration with CNRS researcher Véronique Boulenger[2], developed a series of experiments that relied on brain imaging techniques (functional magnetic resonance imaging or MRI) and behavioral measurements. The participants were asked to complete several tests consisting of motor training using 30 cm-long pliers and syntax exercises in French. This enabled the scientists to identify the brain networks specific to each task, but also common to both tasks.

They discovered for the first time that the handling of the tool and the syntax exercises produced brain activations in common areas, with the same spatial distribution, in a region called the "basal ganglia.” … In addition, the findings show that the reverse is also true: training of language faculties, with exercises to understand sentences with complex structure, improved motor performance with the tool.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211111154244.htm

More evidence for the importance of efforts to keep seniors physically active… language comprehension decline often accompanies increasing sedentary behavior.

And possibly even drawing or painting would qualify as fine motor tool use that could help prevent that complex syntax comprehension decline.

My mom has difficulty with complex sentences now, especially if they involve any pronouns… she doesn’t grasp who or what the pronoun refers to. She’s otherwise quite with it. It’s a peculiar stand-alone weakness though I’m grateful she’s still so functional at her advanced age.

[old as dirt]

1. I guess this explains why I'm no writer.

And why I flunked English 104.

[intrepidity]

2. Fascinating. Would have never guessed this.

Although, from personal experience, learning to use a new tool often leads to communicating to others about it, which may result in language improvement; so I guess I can imagine how these two areas became neuro-linked.

[lastlib]

3. There may be truth to this....

I learned MANY four-letter words from my father's use of hand-tools. And a few from my own.

[JudyM]

4. 😆

Funny and true.