I've had it in my head for the past several months to learn French. I already know a little bit of Spanish (what I remember from high school and college courses). For some reason, though, I'm being drawn to learn French. I even bought study guides and audio CDs. What I haven't afforded myself yet, however, is time. But I should focus more on that aspect, because according to a recent study, learning a language makes your brain grow. 

At the Swedish Armed Forces Interpreter Academy in Uppsala, Sweden, people with a flair for languages go from having no knowledge of a language to speaking it fluently in the space of 13 months. From morning to evening, weekdays and weekends, the recruits study at a pace unlike on any other language course.

As a control group, researchers used medicine and cognitive science students at Umeå University—students who also study hard, but not languages. Both groups were given MRI scans before and after a three-month period of intensive study. While the brain structure of the control group remained unchanged, specific parts of the brain of the language students grew. The parts that developed in size were the hippocampus, a deep-lying brain structure that is involved in learning new material and spatial navigation, and three areas in the cerebral cortex.

“We were surprised that different parts of the brain developed to different degrees depending on how well the students performed and how much effort they had had to put in to keep up with the course,” said Johan Mårtensson, a researcher in psychology at Lund University in Sweden.

Students with greater growth in the hippocampus and areas of the cerebral cortex related to language learning (superior temporal gyrus) had better language skills than the other students. In students who had to put more effort into their learning, greater growth was seen in an area of the motor region of the cerebral cortex (middle frontal gyrus). The areas of the brain in which the changes take place are thus linked to how easy one finds it to learn a language, and development varies according to performance.

“Even if we cannot compare three months of intensive language study with a lifetime of being bilingual, there is a lot to suggest that learning languages is a good way to keep the brain in shape,” Mårtensson said.

So, who wants to learn French with me, or help me practice it? 

(Story materials provided by Lund University.)

I've been on a kick lately about how we should take more responsibility for our actions, that what we do are personal choices and not actions out of our control. 

You may think, too, that forgetfulness is something that we can't control, that it's something our minds do subconsciously. Not true. According to psychology researcher Gerd Thomas Waldhauser at Lund University in Sweden, we can control our memory the same way we control our motor functions. 

Waldhauser’s neuroimaging studies were carried out in a laboratory environment where volunteers were asked to practice forgetting, or attempt to forget facts. Through EEG measurements, Waldhauser showed that the same parts of the brain are activated when we restrain a motor impulse and when we suppress a memory. And just as we can practice restraining motor impulses, we can also train ourselves to repress memories.

Waldhauser has not only shown that we can deliberately forget things. Through EEG measurements, he has also managed to capture the exact moment when a memory is inhibited, when the forgetfulness is imposed.

The inhibition of memory eases off after a few hours. But the more often information is suppressed, the more difficult it becomes to retrieve it.

“If the memories have been suppressed over a long period of time, they could be extremely difficult to retrieve,” Waldhauser said.

Remember this next time you meet someone who says she's forgotten your name. She may actually have done that on purpose.

(Story materials provided by Lund University.)

Think about it—a company is more than one person leading it or a group of managers steering it. It's a team effort. And training courses for a select group of high-level employees may be a waste of money, according to Johan Bertlett, who recently defended a Ph.D. thesis in psychology at Lund University in Sweden.

A good working climate is not only a requirement for job satisfaction—it is also an important success factor for a profit-driven company. Almost 200 employees at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm were included in Bertlett’s study, which shows that the manager is only able to influence the working climate to a limited extent. Instead, it is the interaction between the manager and the staff that is crucial. 

“Of course you need a good manager if the interaction between the manager and the staff is to work,” Bertlett said. “But it is important to understand that the manager’s situation is also influenced by the staff. Simply focusing on the manager means turning a blind eye to the contributions of the staff, and in doing so, you exclude a lot of the potential that exists within the company.”

The best working climate is found at companies where the manager and the staff interact and where the manager creates good conditions for the staff to manage themselves and each other. 

“A good manager should train his or her staff and encourage informal leadership by delegating to those who are willing to take greater responsibility,” Bertlett said.

In his view, there are many benefits of solving problems at operational level; first and foremost, the communication and decision-making paths become shorter, and the managers can focus more on strategic management. 

Many employees are happy to take on more responsibility, but not many are prepared to do it if it is not reflected in their pay packet.

“It is not only a matter of the manager being able to delegate, it is also a matter of how much commitment the employee is willing to show," Bertlett said. "And the company management must also create the general conditions for this to work."

Bertlett hopes that his research will influence how management training is offered in the future. 

“The management of a company should think again before they send their team leaders on management training courses," he said. "It would probably be more beneficial to send an entire team instead." 

(Story materials provided by Lund University.)