Abstract
In the recent book “Babel No More”, Michael Erard (2012) provides a fascinating survey of the world's most extraordinary language learners such as the 19th-century Italian Cardinal Mezzofanti who reportedly spoke 50 languages. The author questions the cornerstone upon which multilingualism is built in the human brain and suggests that this remarkable ability should “change the brain making it different from the average one”. It is interesting to know that already in the early 1900s, the German neurologist Pötzl (1925) stated that the brains of multilinguals should be somehow exceptional pointing to the left lower parietal region (LIPL) as the so-called “language talent area”.