Coma Victim's Language Ability Explained

THE GIST:

* A coma left a teenager only able to speak a language that she had just begun to learn.
* Different parts of the brain become involved when a person learns a second language.
* There is still a lot we don't know about language in the brain.



After 24 hours in a coma, a Croatian girl woke up speaking only German, according to reports that spread across the Internet last week. The 13-year-old had been studying German in school and watching German television shows on her own, according to various versions of the story, but she was not fluent until after the incident. Meanwhile, she lost the ability to speak her native language. Next.....