I have been reading this article and an idea struck me while I was reading along. It’s really just a hypothesis honestly, but wouldn’t it explain so much that acquiring a mother-tongue involves the cortex and the amygdala as a cooperative pair. It helps explain features covered in the linked article and helps explain to me why secondary language acquisition later in life, after adulthood, is not as easy as acquiring whatever language it is that is your mother tongue.

This idea was spawned actually by an episode of Arrow and in the episode the lead character defeats a polygraph test. Perhaps if you consider a question in your secondary language then it’s a job just for the cortex and because it misses the amygdala completely, there is no emotional qualities to your thought process and maybe there won’t be any galvanic skin response, pupil dilation, or pulse changes. Thinking about a false answer in a secondary language may be the key to defeating something like a polygraph testing session. This is something that would be very compelling as a study. You’d need test subjects that acquired a secondary language in adulthood, say French where their native language was English and present them with a polygraph that they were encouraged to try to defeat, and then deliver questions with emotional weight in their home and foreign languages and see if this makes sense.

I think it would be very interesting at least… It opens questions like is adulthood the seal on the amygdala from acquiring any more language/emotion content. Hmmm…