Are we humans simply remodelled apes? Chimps with a tweak? Is the difference between our genomes so minuscule it justifies the argument that our cognition and behaviour must also differ from chimps by barely a whisker? If “chimps are us” should we grant them human rights? Or is this one of the biggest fallacies in the study of evolution? NOT A CHIMP argues that these similarities have been grossly over-exaggerated - we should keep chimps at arm’s length. Are humans cognitively unique after all?
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Symbolic Gestures And Spoken Language Processed By Common Neural System
Back in the saddle after the Christmas break and catching up on a few interesting items. This PNAS paper, which includes Pat Gannon as an author, compares the areas of the human brain that light up when the subject is presented with symbolic gestures, like pantomimes of actions like threading a needle, or emblems that have social significance like finger to lips to indicate "be quiet", with the speech equivalents. Both classes of stimuli, they report, activate a common left-lateralized network of perisylvian areas of temporal lobe. Their abstract concludes thus: "We suggest that these anterior and posterior perisylvian areas, identified since the 19th century as the core of the brain's language system, are not in fact committed to language processing, but may function as a modality-independent semiotic system that plays a broader role in human communication, linking meaning with symbols whether these are words, gestures, images, sounds or objects."
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