Nuestra NEBRIJA 25 - Mayo 2018

32 Until a couple of months ago, I worked as a scientist in an international neuroscience center, where I had a team dedicated to the study of neurocognitive mechanisms related to the acquisition and processing of language in multilingual populations. When I decided to quit my job and join the Nebrija family, many of my colleagues wondered why someone with a neuroscientific background would want to start a new adventure in a place without so much tradition in cognitive neuroscience of language. Although it is possible that we will soon begin to have more representation of some of these techniques at the Nebrija University thanks to the emerging collaborations with centers of international prestige in the field of neurosciences, the truth is that the answer to the doubts of my colleagues can be solved taking into account the present time. There are many possible approaches to understand the processes of acquisition, representation and processing of mother tongues and foreign languages, and cognitive neuroscience of language represents only one of these paths. My favorite simile to explain the different ways we have to understand language is that of the moon. From our planet, we have the option of seeing a good part of the satellite, although if we remain immobile in a single place at a certain point of time, we can only see half of the moon. However, if we change our location we can greatly expand our knowledge of the moon, since given the peculiarities of the movements and shapes of the earth and the moon, we will have a global vision of up to 59% of the satellite. That is, if we move, we can see more of it. This parallelism with the visible face of the moon may serve to realize that, without any doubt, it is necessary to understand how the human brain is capable of managing one or several linguistic systems. Nevertheless, this will give us only a partial image. Simply by moving to nearby territories and related areas we increase our understanding of the object of study. We must not forget that the language faculty is based on other basic cognitive processes, such as perception, attention or memory, and that in order to have a more accurate picture of the teaching and learning processes of a language, it is necessary to consider the human cognitive system as a whole. Therefore, an approach to multilingualism based on cognitive science and psycholinguistics is absolutely fundamental to understand a The far side of the moon Jon Andoni Duñabeitia Principal Investigator at the School of Languages and Education, Nebrija University The Faculty of Languages and Education is working to break down the boundaries of knowledge and to strategically position itself on a scientific level offering us a more global approach of the Spanish language . Article I came to this U niversity in order to make the invisible visible from new perspectives