It is a major part of what separates us from the animals, the ability to verbalize our thoughts and understand the verbalizations of others. However, this evolutionary miracle is not exclusive to human beings – other species like dolphins and birds communicate regularly. Humans, however, have taken communication to such an advanced degree that we can verbalize even the most minute detail, and our brains are wired to understand them. Not only are we capable of multiple languages, we also have the capacity for non-verbal sign language. In fact, a recent study out of the University of Rochester focusing on sign language has reached a new conclusion on how the brain is wired for language.
It is a major part of what separates us from the animals, the ability to verbalize our thoughts and understand the verbalizations of others. However, this evolutionary miracle is not exclusive to human beings – other species like dolphins and birds communicate regularly. Humans, however, have taken communication to such an advanced degree that we can verbalize even the most minute detail, and our brains are wired to understand them. Not only are we capable of multiple languages, we also have the capacity for non-verbal sign language. In fact, a recent study out of the University of Rochester focusing on sign language has reached a new conclusion on how the brain is wired for language.
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The study found that there is no single advanced section of the human brain that allows for language capabilities beyond those of the rest of the animal kingdom. Humans actually rely on several regions of the brain which perform their own function to comprehend a given sentence. Depending on the grammar involved, the brain will activate different regions to make sense of it.
The team of brain and cognitive scientists who worked on this project included Newman, Elissa Newport, Ted Supalla, Daphne Bavelier, and Peter Hauser. They published their findings in the recent edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.
To test their hypothesis that communication is a function of multiple brain regions, they utilized American Sign Language for the special qualities it possesses. English, for example, relies heavily on the order of words in a sentence to convey the meaning. In general, the subject of the sentence comes first, followed by the object. For example, in the sentence "Joe rides a horse," it is obvious from the word order that Joe is the one riding, and the horse is being ridden. Other languages like Spanish rely more heavily on inflections to convey meaning, such as suffixes at the ends of words.
On the other hand, sign language can express its subject-object relationships in both ways – using word order and inflection. A signer can sign the words "Joe rides a horse" in order to convey meaning, or can use physical inflections like moving his hands through space or signing on one side of the body. For the experiment, the team of scientists selected 24 sentences and expressed them using both methods.
Experiment subjects, fluent in American Sign Language, viewed videos of the sentences while lying on their backs in an MRI machine. Coils were wrapped around their heads to pick up signs of elevated brain activity. Sounds pleasant, right?
The study found that there are distinct regions of the brain that process the two types of sentences, those conveying meaning through word order, and those using inflection. For the word-order sentences, the subjects used their frontal cortex, the region responsible for putting information into sequences. For the inflection sentences, the brain activates the temporal lobe which divides the information into its constituent parts.
Practical applications for this study could be used in the medical field. Doctors and teachers can use this knowledge to assess how best to teach language to people who suffer from brain damage. If their temporal lobe is damaged, the teacher can stress word-order sentences, and vice versa. The data can also aid in the study of how language capabilities evolved over time. We can now scientifically show how human communication separates us from the animals.
For more information: University of Rochester
For more information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
