What Chinese Speaking Does to Your Brain

[chinopinyin]

Jenny Crinion and coauthors have published the paper Neuroanatomical markers of speaking Chinese in Human Brain Mapping 2009. See here or here.

These authors find two brain regions where speakers of Chinese (both native and foreign) have significantly greater gray and white matter density than those who don't speak Chinese. See the picture

Will learning Chinese make you smarter?

[anonymoose]

Has a link between gray and white matter density and smartness been established?

[xiaocai]

I thought generally learning a second (or third, or fourth) language is always a good exercise for your brain.

And the only thing I can extrapolate from the result of the research is: grey and white matter density has nothing to do with whatsoever.

[c_redman]

According to the paper, the link between Chinese language and brain structure was already known. What this paper showed was that it's also true for foreigners learning Chinese, and not due to the genetics of ethnic Chinese.

[aristotle1990]

Has a link between gray and white matter density and smartness been established?

Yes, but, as far I can tell, not with the regions of the brain indicated in this study.

Also, it's certainly possible that those who are taking Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies are simply better at tone processing to begin with. To really test whether learning Chinese makes a difference, you'd have to measure their brains before and after the two years of studying Chinese, or use as your control group a group of students just starting to study Chinese at that school.