A new study of how humans learn modern languages has found that the brains of the most talented linguists hear foreign terms as random noise, not words.

They found that those with higher auditory precision mastered the pronunciation of new languages faster and more accurately than other learners and relied less on the brain’s left sensorimotor system (involved in language processing) when processing foreign-language sounds. Instead, their brain activity patterns were similar to those that occur when the brain processes non-speech sounds.