BML podcast: You and Your Language - How Native Language Shapes the Brain

Professor Kairi Kreegipuu attended the International Neurodynamics of Language and Music Symposium in Helsinki in 2025, and in her keynote talk, she introduced a new concept "the national brain".
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Here, we discuss with her the effects of the native language on the development of children's brains. Estonian is a quantity language with three different quantities or durations of phonemes and syllables, which places a hard requirement on the duration detection in the auditory system. Professor Kreegipuu's work shows that this shapes the brains of children speaking Estonian as their first language. She also recommends the use of songs in language teaching. Please see her latest publications on this topic:

Lyu, S., Põldver, N., Kask, L., Wang, L., & Kreegipuu, K. (2024). Native language background affects the perception of duration and pitch. Brain and Language, 256, 105460.

Lyu, S., Poldver, N., Kask, L., Wang, L., & Kreegipuu, K. (2024). Effect of musical expertise on the perception of duration and pitch in language: A cross-linguistic study. Acta Psychologica, 244, 104195.