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London: Researchers have discovered an earlier origin of the human language pathway in the brain, suggesting that its origins lie about 25 million years ago, 20 million years earlier than previously thought.
Previously, many scientists thought that a precursor to the language pathway had emerged more recently, about 5 million years ago, with a common ancestor of apes and humans.
For neuroscientists, this is comparable to finding a fossil that illuminates evolutionary history. However, unlike bones, the brains were not fossilized. Instead, neuroscientists need to infer what the brains of common ancestors might have been like by studying the brain scans of living primates and comparing them to humans.
“It is like finding a new fossil of a long-lost ancestor. It’s also exciting that an older origin can still be discovered, ”said study lead author Chris Petkov of Newcastle University in the UK.
For the findings, international teams of European and American scientists carried out the study of brain images and the analysis of auditory regions and brain pathways in humans, apes and monkeys.
They discovered a segment of this language pathway in the human brain that interconnects the auditory cortex with the frontal lobe regions, important for processing speech and language.
Although speech and language are unique to humans, the link through the auditory pathway in other primates suggests an evolutionary basis in auditory cognition and vocal communication.
“We predicted, but could not know for sure, whether the human language pathway may have had an evolutionary basis in the auditory system of non-human primates. I admit that we were surprised to see a similar pathway hidden in plain sight within the auditory system of non-human primates, “added Petkov. The study also illuminates the remarkable transformation of the human language pathway.
A key human difference was found: The human left side of this brain pathway was stronger, and the right side appears to have diverged from the auditory evolutionary prototype to involve non-auditory parts of the brain.
The study was based on brain scans of resources openly shared by the global scientific community. It also spawned new original brain scans that are shared globally to inspire further discovery.
Furthermore, since the authors have predicted that the auditory precursor to the human language pathway may be even older, the work inspires the neurobiological search for its earliest evolutionary origin, the next brain “fossil,” found in older animals. related to humans.
“This discovery has tremendous potential to understand what aspects of human auditory language and cognition can be studied with animal models in ways that are not possible with humans and apes,” said study lead author Timothy Griffiths. (IANS)
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