When children and ad-olescents learn new languages, it is…

When children and ad-olescents learn new languages, it is against the backdrop of increasing gray matter, and so their learning the additional languages may occur through the addition of gray matter, but when adults continue their focus on multiple languages - this time with an emphasis on simulta-neous translation - it is against a backdrop of pruning synapses. Thus the language learning that takes place in adulthood may take place more through getting rid of gray matter getting rid of some ineffi-cient nerve cells to speed up processes which would explain why the simultaneous interpreters had less gray matter than other multilingual adults.

— from Time

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