Gramer girl here, I'm a neon-fogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today,

I'm going to start with a study about language that blew my mind and will end by talking

about tricky possessives. This first piece is by Claudio Brzole and Simon Tibo from

the Leon Neuroscience Research Center, writing about their research. Language has traditionally

been considered a complex skill that mobilizes brain networks specifically dedicated to

linguistic processing. But in recent years, neuroscience research has returned to this

idea and offered new insights. Notably, studies have suggested that areas of the brain that

control certain language functions, such as processing the meaning of words, are also

involved in the control of fine motor skills. Syntax, the ability to correctly structure

words into a sentence, is one of the most important features of language. While evidence

has yet to link syntax skills specifically with motor control in the brain, research

published in 2019 revealed a correlation between having good syntactic ability and being

skilled at using tools. With this in mind, our international research team was interested

to know whether the use of tools engages parts of the brain similar to those mobilized

when we're thinking about the construction of sentences. We invited participants to 144

across a series of experiments to perform tests consisting of motor training and syntax

exercises in French. Our new findings published in the journal Science show that these two

skills do engage the same region of the brain. We also found motor training with a tool

that improves our ability to understand the syntax of complex sentences and vice versa.

For the motor training, we asked participants to use mechanical pliers to insert small

pegs into different holes. In the syntax exercise, participants were shown sentences such

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