For hundreds of years, scientists learned about the brain by observing people recovering from injuries. Many with an injury on the left side of the brain had problems understanding or using words. From this, doctors reasoned that the left brain must manage speech and language. They didn’t know, though, if speech and language centers were on this side in everyone. The finding of a new study may be able to tell the answer.

In the new study, researchers used fMRI (功能性磁共振成像) to watch brains in action as 39 children and 14 adults tried to understand sentences. Each fMRI scan (扫描) produced many pictures of the brain. Patches of color in each image highlighted which parts of the brain were getting the most blood. This is a sign that they were turned on and active.

To the researchers’ surprise, the left side of the brain was not the only part that was turned on in the children. Both sides became active when they tried to understand a sentence. That activity in the right brain started to fall in children who were older. By age 19, no activity showed up on the right. All speech-and-language processing now was taking place only on the left. The move from two-sided to one-sided language processing takes place gradually. It starts around the time we learn to talk.

Elissa Newport, who led the study, finds it exciting that children have speech centers on both sides of their brains. “If both sides of their brains can pitch in, this may also explain why left-brain injuries often are not as damaging in young children as in adults,” said she.

Children process language like “mental switch-hitters”. So, the next time you think your parents or older siblings (兄弟姐妹) don’t understand you, give them a break. They could be using just a smaller part of their brains.

【小题1】How did the researchers conduct the study?

A．By drawing pictures of brains.	B．By highlighting different signs.
C．By reading examination results.	D．By studying the blood samples.

【小题2】What did the new study find?

A．Younger children need less time to understand a sentence.

B．Children use both sides of the brain for language processing.

C．The right side of the brain is less important than the left side.

D．The right side of the brain gradually becomes inactive after birth.

【小题3】What does the underlined part “pitch in” in Paragraph 4 mean?

A．Get involved.	B．Get damaged.
C．Be examined.	D．Be recognized.