Abstract
This study builds on the hypothesis put forth in Boeckx and Benítez-Burraco (2014), according to which the developmental changes expressed at the levels of brain morphology and neural connectivity that resulted in a more globular braincase in our species were crucial to understand the origins of our language-ready brain. Specifically, this paper explores the links between two well-known ‘language-related’ genes like FOXP2 and ROBO1 implicated in vocal learning and the initial set of genes of interest put forth in Boeckx and Benítez-Burraco (2014), with RUNX2 as focal point. Relying on the existing literature, we uncover potential molecular links that could be of interest to future experimental inquiries into the biological foundations of language and the testing of our initial hypothesis. Our discussion could also be relevant for clinical linguistics and for the interpretation of results from paleogenomics.
Highlights
OVERVIEW A central goal of the biolinguistic enterprise (Di Sciullo and Boeckx, 2011) is to shed light on the genetic basis of a complex trait, characteristic of modern humans, which we dub the language-ready brain, understood as the set of neural structures that serve as a critical biological substrate for the acquisition and use of grammatical systems routinely called natural languages
The anatomical structure we focused on in our 2014 paper, the thalamus, plays a crucial role in establishing and maintaining efficient cortico-cortical connections that we deemed necessary for crossmodularity (Boeckx and Benítez-Burraco, 2014: see Results and Discussion; Wang et al, 2010a; Buckner and Krienen, 2013), it functions as a bridge between the cortex and the subcortical structures most frequently associated with the externalization component of language
‘ROBO1 is connected to X which is in turn connected to Y which is in turn connected to Z.’ (e) We explored potential connections with genes selected in anatomically modern humans (AMH; Pääbo’s 2014 list)
Summary
OVERVIEW A central goal of the biolinguistic enterprise (Di Sciullo and Boeckx, 2011) is to shed light on the genetic basis of a complex trait, characteristic of modern humans, which we dub the language-ready brain, understood as the set of neural structures that serve as a critical biological substrate for the acquisition and use of grammatical systems routinely called natural languages. SLITs proteins have been claimed to play important roles in brain development before and after birth, and several pieces of evidence suggest that they may be involved in species-specific developmental patterns of the thalamus.
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