Scientists have long been interested in how the deaf process signed languages in the braia Understanding that activity could shed light to whether the brain contains specialized structures for decoding【M1】______ linguistic patterns in general regardless how they are conveyed. A【M2】______ new study published in Tuesdays issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science suggests that the brain does have such wiring, challenged the idea that speech and sound are vital for human【M3】______ language. Laura Ann Petitto and other researchers base their conclusions on a series of experiments which involves 11 profoundly deaf people and 10 hearing people. Earlier work had demonstrated that deaf people were processing signed sentences used mostly their left【M4】______ hemispheres, just as hearing people parsing spoken language. But the【M5】______ new study found that in addition, both groups rely on identical brain structures for similar tasks. The researchers were particularly stunned by this activity in the brain of the deaf. The puzzled finding has led Petitto and Zatorre to propose that【M6】______ perhaps areas of the brain once viewing as devoted to sounds actually【M7】______ contain different types of cells that are capable of responding at the【M8】______ patterns of natural language in any form. 'Such neural specialization for aspects of language patterning appears to be neurally modifiable,【M9】______ as languages with radically different sensory modalities such as speech and sign are processed at different brain sites', the authors write,【M10】______ 'while, at the same time, the neural pathways for expressing and perceiving natural language appear to be neurally highly modifiable.' 【M1】