Ellie Zolfagharifard for MailOnline
If you failed to pay attention in your French lessons, then you may have been missing out.
A new study suggests that learning a new language stimulates the same part of the brain as having sex or eating chocolate.
Scientists from Spain and Germany found people who expand their vocabulary trigger a part of the brain known as the ventral striatum.
This is a pleasure centre that lights up when people are involved in activities such as sex, drugs, gambling or eating sugary foods.
Researchers from Barcelona's Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute and Otto von Guericke University in Germany made the discovery after conducting trials on 36 adults.
The group participated in gambling simulations and language-based tests, and scans showed that both activities stimulated the same parts of the brain.
The team were also able to link up the number of new words learnt by each person during the experiment with a low myelin index, which is a measure of structure integrity in the brain.
Those with higher myelin concentrations - or a better connected to the reward area - were able to learn more words.
'The main objective of the study was to know to what extent language learning activates subcortical reward and motivational systems', explains Pablo Ripollés, PhD student at Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute.
'The fact that language could be favoured by this type of circuitries is an interesting hypothesis from an evolutionary point of view'.
The researchers believe there may be an emotional connection in learning new words.
This could also explain why, as people grow older, they are still motivated to learn new words and communication techniques.
Lead author Antoni Rodríguez Fornells told Catalan regional daily La Vanguardia: 'From the point of view of evolution, it is an interesting theory that this type of mechanism could have helped human language to develop.'
The researchers now hope to use results from their study to develop new treatment for people with language-learning difficulties.