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The best time to learn a new language is between birth and 7 years of age, reports Yahoo! News (AP). Some very interesting tests by international researchers delve into the how and why of this phenomenon, hoping to apply it to adult language learning.

Every language comes with a unique set of sounds, which babies are able to distinguish long before they begin talking. But this ability to distinguish actually decreases by the time they start talking.

[Dr. Patricia] Kuhl offers an example: Japanese doesn’t distinguish between the “L” and “R” sounds of English — “rake” and “lake” would sound the same. Her team proved that a 7-month-old in Tokyo and a 7-month-old in Seattle respond equally well to those different sounds. But by 11 months, the Japanese infant had lost a lot of that ability.

And if you’re wondering how researchers can decipher sounds a baby detects, the article explains (primarily through toys and eye-gaze).

Monolingual kids tend to tune out words that don’t fit into the sounds they recognize, thereby creating a one-language pathway in the brain. Apparently, bilingual babies can absorb both languages at once, which seems to make bilingual babies’ brains more flexible.

The researchers tested 44 12-month-olds to see how they recognized three-syllable patterns — nonsense words, just to test sound learning. Sure enough, gaze-tracking showed the bilingual babies learned two kinds of patterns at the same time — like lo-ba-lo or lo-lo-ba — while the one-language babies learned only one.

Unfortunately, the brain’s language circuitry is mostly set up by age 7, making it difficult for older children and adults to learn a second language at the native level. But that doesn’t mean the window is forever closed.

Click here to read the full article, and how researchers want to tap into this same brain circuitry to help adults learn.