The human language pathway in the brain has been identified by scientists as being at least 25 million years old — 20 million years older than previously thought. The study illuminates the remarkable transformation of the human language pathway
Abstract
The human arcuate fasciculus pathway is crucial for language, interconnecting posterior temporal and inferior frontal areas. Whether a monkey homolog exists is controversial and the nature of human-specific specialization unclear. Using monkey, ape and human auditory functional fields and diffusion-weighted MRI, we identified homologous pathways originating from the auditory cortex. This discovery establishes a primate auditory prototype for the arcuate fasciculus, reveals an earlier phylogenetic origin and illuminates its remarkable transformation.
Origins of language pathway in the brain at least 25 million years old
Previously, a precursor of the language pathway was thought by many scientists to have emerged more recently, about 5 million years ago, with a common ancestor of both apes and humans.
For neuroscientists, this is comparable to finding a fossil that illuminates evolutionary history. However, unlike bones, brains did not fossilize. Instead neuroscientists need to infer what the brains of common ancestors may have been like by studying brain scans of living primates and comparing them to humans.
Professor Chris Petkov from the Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, UK the study lead said: “It is like finding a new fossil of a long lost ancestor. It is also exciting that there may be an older origin yet to be discovered still.”
The international teams of European and US scientists carried out the brain imaging study and analysis of auditory regions and brain pathways in humans, apes and monkeys which is published in Nature Neuroscience.
Newcastle University > https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/latest/2020/04/originsoflanguage25millionyearsold/
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