a's area, and the temporoparietal area (Tpt) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC) corresponding to Wernicke's area. In contrast, the non-biological sounds which were acoustically similar to the coos and screams but had no meaning for the animals elicited significantly less activity in these regions; rather, they were associated with greater activation of the brain's primary auditory areas. (The reason for this, the researchers suggest, is that these sounds were new to the monkeys and the primary auditory areas may be especially attuned to novel stimuli.)

Based on these findings, the researchers suggest that the communication centers in the brain of the last common ancestor to macaques and humans particularly those centers used for interpreting species-specific vocalizations may have been recruited during the evolution of language in humans. In the macaque, these areas may currently play a parallel, prelinguistic function, in which monkeys are able to assign meaning to species-specific sounds. In addition, in light of an earlier study published by the same group, in which species-specific vocalizations of macaques activated brain regions that process higher-order visual and emotional information, the researchers suggest that the language areas of the brain may have evolved from a much larger system used to extract meaning from socially relevant situations a system in which humans and non-human primates may share similar neural pathways.

Further studies to be conducted include investigating which regions of the non-human primate brain are activated when animals listen to meaningful auditory stimuli other than species-specific vocalizations, such as a predators' calls, sounds made by humans, or other relevant environmental stimuli. In addition, they are interested in studying the pattern of brain activation elicited by non-auditory stimuli that convey the same meaning, such as visual images of monkeys producing vocalizations.

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Contact: Jennifer Wenger
jwenger@mail.nih.gov
301-496-7243
NIH/National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
23-Jul-2006

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