Monkey brains give language clues

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=17820&in_page_id=2
Monday, July 24, 2006

There may be a reason why humans love watching and listening to monkeys
chatter.

Macaque monkeys have a strangely human way of listening to the sounds
of their mates, a study has found. When the primates call out to each
other they make use of the brain regions used by humans for language
processing, the research revealed.

The discovery supports the theory that the origins of language go back
a long way, to a creature that pre-dated humans and modern monkeys.

Dr James Battey, director of the National Institute on Deafness and
Other Communication Disorders in the US, said: 'This finding brings us
closer to understanding the point at which the building blocks of
language appeared on the evolutionary timeline.

'While the fossil record cannot answer this question for us, we can
turn to the here and now - through brain imaging of living non-human
primates - for a glimpse into how language, or at least the neural
circuitry required for language, came to be.'

While monkeys do not possess language, they can communicate signals
about food, identity, or danger to other members of their species using
cries and squawks.

In humans, the two main brain regions involved in language encoding are
known as Broca's area and Wernicke's area. Broca's area is situated in
the frontal lobe of the brain with Wernicke's area behind it.

Although monkeys are not able to perform the mental activities required
for speaking human languages, their brains possess regions that are
structurally similar to these two areas.

Scientists measured brain activity in the macaques using a positron
emission tomography scan, which tracks blood flow. Scans were taken of
three monkeys as they listened to the recorded screams of other
macaques.

The findings were published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

.

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