Dara Ladjevardian discusses how language structure shapes the brain, comparing how Mandarin and Latin scripts activate different neural pathways. The conversation explores whether psychedelics influenced human language evolution and how reading different writing systems affects memory.
What have you found about the way we structure language and the way our brains work?
I have found that memory appears to be greater in hunter gatherers who only have oral language and not written language. There are studies that show that reading Mandarin uses parts of the brain that reading Latin based scripts, alphabetic scripts, doesn't.
I've also seen studies say if you speak Mandarin and you read in Mandarin versus if you speak a Latin language, you see meaningful changes in networks across the brain. Do you think it's possible that psychedelics drove the evolution of language? The drunk ape theory?
