How Language Lights Up the Brain

Screen time worries aren’t just for kids anymore. Families are seeing the same habits in parents and grandparents. Dr. Sanjay Gupta talks with psychiatrist Dr. Sue Varma about risks to the aging brain, warning signs and what families can do. Our show was produced by Kyra Dahring ...  Show more

As a growing Ebola outbreak in Central Africa raises alarm, listeners have questions about what it is, how it spreads, and how worried they should be. Sanjay breaks down what we know — including why Ebola is highly infectious but not easily contagious — and why this outbreak has ...  Show more

More than half the world’s population speaks more than one language. Viorica Marian, PhD, of Northwestern University, talks about why speaking multiple languages may have far-reaching cognitive benefits, how the bilingual brain processes language and how the languages we speak sh ...  Show more

For those of us who speak only one language, the idea of learning twenty or thirty sounds impossible. But there are “hyperpolyglots” who have managed this remarkable feat. Evelina Fedorenko, PhD, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discusses what sets polyglots apart an ...  Show more

Chantel Prat is a brain researcher, a professor at the University of Washington, and the author of The Neuroscience of You: How Every Brain is Different and How to Understand Yours. She joins Erica Chidi to talk about how to better understand our individual brain strengths and wh ...  Show more

My guest is Eddie Chang, MD, a neurosurgeon and professor of neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the co-director of the Center for Neural Engineering & Prostheses. We discuss the brain mechanisms underlying speech, language learning and ...  Show more