The Ultimate Gadget: Your Brain

On my way back from my bike ride this afternoon, I started listening to this Radio Lab show on NPR.  It was intriguing enough that I looked it up online when I got home and finished the episode.  It is a fascinating discussion of language and what it means to think.

Basically, experiments have shown that people's ability to think about complex topics (in some cases no more complex than the biscuit is in the corner to the left of the blue wall) is tied to language.  Language is thought to be a power connecting force in our brains.  Simple concepts like color can be linked to spatial concepts like "A is to the left of B".  Those connections don't exist from birth and only seem to develop in people who have language and actually, even people who only have reasonably complex language.  This concept fascinates me.

When I conveyed the basic concepts of the show to my son, his first question was the same one I had: what is the best language?  This question was not posed in the show (granted they only had one hour), but I think is very interesting.  It may be the case that all languages that are spoken by a reasonably large number of people are sufficiently developed to allow for complex thought, but can we test on the margin which is better?  And if so, doesn't humanity have a reason to want to all speak that language?

I think that there is an equally intriguing set of follow up questions:

• How can we make our language more complex to make our brains capable of thinking about even more complex concepts and topics?
• Is there a natural limit?  
• Can language be guided and crafted to make this happen?  How?
• Have there already been efforts in the past to make this happen?  Have they been successful?
• Are there ways of thinking or thought exercises that one can do to better connect various parts of their brains (and presumably have higher "horsepower" than before?