How the Brain Got Language - Towards a New Road Map
1st Edition
Published on 11. August 2020
401 pages
978-90-272-6067-3 (ISBN)
Description
How did humans evolve biologically so that our brains and social interactions could support language processes, and how did cultural evolution lead to the invention of languages (signed as well as spoken)? This book addresses these questions through comparative (neuro)primatology - comparative study of brain, behavior and communication in monkeys, apes and humans - and an EvoDevoSocio framework for approaching biological and cultural evolution within a shared perspective. Each chapter provides an authoritative yet accessible review from a different discipline: linguistics (evolutionary, computational and neuro), archeology and neuroarcheology, macaque neurophysiology, comparative neuroanatomy, primate behavior, and developmental studies. These diverse perspectives are unified by having each chapter close with a section on its implications for creating a new road map for multidisciplinary research. These implications include assessment of the pluses and minuses of the Mirror System Hypothesis as an "e;old"e; road map. The cumulative road map is then presented in the concluding chapter. Originally published as a special issue of Interaction Studies 19:1/2 (2018).
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Michael A. Arbib
How the Brain Got Language - Towards a New Road Map
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08/2020
John Benjamins Publishing Co
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Content
- Intro
- How the Brain Got Language - Towards a New Road Map
- Editorial page
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Table of contents
- Introducing the Volume: "How the brain got language: Towards a new road map"
- Comparative Neuroprimatology and the EvoDevoSocio Perspective
- An old road map to draw upon
- Starting from the macaque
- Bringing in emotion
- Turn-taking and prosociality
- Imitation, pantomime and development
- Action, tool making, and language
- Meaning and grammar emerging
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Computational challenges of evolving the language-ready brain: 1. From manual action to protosign
- 1. The Mirror System Hypothesis (MSH) introduced
- 2. Introducing 'computational' comparative neuroprimatology
- 3. Setting a baseline for LCA-m
- 3.1 The FARS (Fagg-Arbib-Rizzolatti-Sakata) model
- 3.2 Modeling mirror systems in action recognition
- 3.3 Flexible action patterns and their rapid reorganization
- 4. An LCA-c innovation built on LCA-m mechanisms
- 5. Varieties of imitation
- 6. From imitation to pantomime
- 7. Is the path to speech indirect?
- 7.1 Some macaque premotor neurons may control vocalization
- 7.2 Case study: The role of the cerebellum in prism adaptation
- 8. Towards a new road map
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Computational challenges of evolving the language-ready brain: 2. Building towards neurolinguistics
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The Template Construction Grammar (TCG) model for how the human brain may support language production and comprehension
- 2.1 Modeling using schema theory
- 2.2 A model of language production for visual scene description
- 2.3 A model of language comprehension for visual scene description
- 3. An evolutionary framework for language-ready pathways and processes
- 3.1 SemRep in LCA-m
- 3.2 SemRep in LCA-c
- 3.3 SemRep in the language-ready brain
- 3.4 Implications
- 4. Complex action recognition and imitation support the transition to language
- 5. Towards a new road map
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Reflections on the differential organization of mirror neuron systems for hand and mouth and their role in the evolution of communication in primates
- Introduction
- Mirroring others' actions and gestures through the motor system
- Hand and mouth: Two different mirror networks
- Processing reward and social context
- Mouth mirror access to visual information does not occur via the parietal cortex
- Facial gestural communication and the face mirror network
- Hand mouth synergies
- Hand mouth synergies for gestural communication
- Towards a new road map
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Plasticity, innateness, and the path to language in the primate brain: Comparing macaque, chimpanzee and human circuitry for visuomotor integration
- Introduction: Comparative neuroscience, exaptation, and language
- LCA-m: Early primate adaptations for the visual control of action
- LCA-c: Hominid dorsal stream adaptations for social transmission of learned skills
- Human-specific adaptations: Integrating cognitive control and action sequencing with high-fidelity representations of action details
- The chicken or the egg: Continuity, divergence, and the environmental context for change in brain-behavior evolution
- Flexibility and environmental sensitivity
- Specificity and innateness
- Toward a new road map
- References
- Voice, gesture and working memory in the emergence of speech
- Introduction
- Anatomy of the speech circuit
- Grammar and semantics: Imaging studies
- Working memory
- From monkey to human
- Speech origins
- Descending control systems
- Hand control and the mirror neuron system
- Template construction grammar
- Towards a new road map
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Relating the evolution of Music-Readiness and Language-Readiness within the context of comparative neuroprimatology
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Comparative neuroprimatology and MS/CIH
- 3. The music-readiness hypotheses, comparative neuroprimatology, and MS/CIH
- 3.1 MR-1, the rhythm-first hypothesis
- 3.2 MR-2, the combinatoriality hypothesis
- 3.3 MR-3, the socio-affect-cohesion hypothesis
- 4. Towards a new road map
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Why do we want to talk? Evolution of neural substrates of emotion and social cognition
- Introduction
- Gestural communication, language and limbic neural substrates in human and nonhuman primates
- Detection of the changing social environment and behavioral responses
- Motivation, evaluation of error, modulation
- Feelings, body and mind integration, and empathic theory of mind
- Emotion, social cognition and language evolution
- Towards a new road map
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Mind the gap - moving beyond the dichotomy between intentional gestures and emotional facial and vocal signals of nonhuman primates
- Background
- Scenarios of language evolution and the role of emotions
- Comparative approaches to language evolution
- Emotional and intentional communication in nonhuman primates
- Facial expressions
- Vocalizations
- Gestures
- How can comparative research on emotions contribute to theories of language evolution?
- References
- From sharing food to sharing information: Cooperative breeding and language evolution
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Callitrichid vocal communication
- 3. Cooperative breeding and vocal complexity?
- 4. Callitrichid communication and the mirror system hypothesis
- 5. Towards a new roadmap
- References
- Social manipulation, turn-taking and cooperation in apes: Implications for the evolution of language-based interaction in humans
- Cooperation and human communication
- Animal communication, manipulation vs. information
- Social manipulation, mind-reading, ontogenetic ritualization
- Towards a new road map
- References
- Language origins: Fitness consequences, platform of trust, cooperation, and turn-taking
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Communication: A fitness-consequences perspective
- 3. The platform of trust
- 4. Cooperation
- 4.1 The evolutionary origins of human cooperation
- 5. The platform of trust and the Mirror System Hypothesis
- 6. Turn-taking
- 6.1 Alternation
- 6.2 Synchrony (fast-paced temporal coordination)
- 6.3 Conditional relevance
- 6.4 (Egalitarian) role reversibility
- 7. Towards a new road map
- Acknowledgements
- References
- The evolutionary roots of human imitation, action understanding and symbols
- 1. Introduction: The evolutionary foundation of human bodily imitation and language
- 1.1 Imitation focusing on objects and body movements in humans and chimpanzees
- 1.2 Cultural differences of gestures in wild chimpanzees
- 1.3 Social learning via shared body sensory experiences with others
- 2. Ontogeny and mechanisms of complex imitation in humans
- 3. Understanding actions by using referential information from faces
- 4. Toward a new road map
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Pantomime and imitation in great apes: Implications for reconstructing the evolution of language
- Introduction
- Pantomime
- Semantics
- Tools, relationships, scripts
- Imitation
- Towards a new road map
- Funding
- References
- From action to spoken and signed language through gesture: Some basic developmental issues for a discussion on the evolution of the human language-ready brain
- Introduction
- 1. From action to gesture and word
- 1.1 Links between early motor skills and gestures
- 1.2 Early action and gesture ''Vocabulary'' and its relationship to word comprehension and production
- 2. Representational techniques across elicited pantomime in children, communicative gestures and sign languages
- 3. Similarities between gestures and signs
- 4. Toward a new road map
- References
- Praxis, symbol and language: Developmental, ecological and linguistic issues
- 1. Introduction
- 2. From communicative signal to representational symbol
- 3. From symbol to system: The emergence of language
- 4. Niche construction: Meaning, materiality and human development
- 5. The ontogenesis of praxic action, imitation and language: Beyond affordance
- 6. Toward a new road map
- Neuro-computational subsystems and their integration
- EcoEvoDevo-Socio: A synoptic view
- Genetics and epigenetics of the language-ready brain
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Archaeology and the evolutionary neuroscience of language: The technological pedagogy hypothesis
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The human technological niche
- 3. Stone tools and language evolution
- 3.1 Oldowan flake production
- 3.2 From complex action recognition and imitation to proto-language
- 3.3 Acheulean shaping
- 3.4 From proto-language to language
- 4. Conclusion: Towards a new road map
- Funding
- References
- Tracing the evolutionary trajectory of verbal working memory with neuro-archaeology
- Introduction
- Neuro-archaeological insights into the evolution of working memory
- Working memory centers activated during stone tool production
- Discussion
- Towards a new road map
- Acknowledgements
- References
- From actions to events: Communicating through language and gesture
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Communication with a common ground
- 3. The structure of actions and events
- 4. The interpretation of gesture
- 5. Gesture sequences
- 6. Multimodal communication: Gesture-speech ensembles
- 6.1 Co-gestural demonstratives
- 6.2 More expressive co-gestural ensembles
- 7. Meaning in the absence of common groun
- 8. Toward a new road map
- Acknowledgements
- References
- From evolutionarily conserved frontal regions for sequence processing to human innovations for syntax
- Introduction
- Structured sequence learning and empirical links to analogous operations in language
- Conserved sequence processing in human and nonhuman primates
- Cross-species similarities and differences in sequence learning and the primate frontal cortex
- Possible evolutionary pathways from conserved combinatorial capacities to the emergence of language
- Patterned sequences in motor movements
- Primate vocal communication and the perception of conspecific vocal exchanges
- The expansion of cognitive combinatorial abilities
- Pathways from conserved combinatorial learning to proto-language
- Toward a new roadmap
- Funding
- References
- The evolution of enhanced conceptual complexity and of Broca's area: Language preadaptations
- Introduction
- Conceptual complexity
- Sequence processing
- Toward a new road map
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Mental travels and the cognitive basis of language
- Introduction
- Mental time travel
- Role of hippocampus and entorhinal cortex
- So to language
- Neural links
- Theory of mind
- Toward a new road map
- The Pleistocene
- Funding
- References
- The comparative neuroprimatology 2018 (CNP-2018) road map for research on 'How the Brain Got Language'
- An overall perspective
- Aspects of language to be explained
- Language is a special form of communication
- Lexicon and grammar
- The endless aboutness of language
- Social structure and the motivation to converse
- Action, gesture and language
- Methodologies
- Neurophysiology and comparative neuroanatomy
- Behavior, social structure and communication
- Archeology
- High-level theory
- Modeling and mechanism
- Genetics
- Road map preliminaries
- Establishing the "Stages"
- In search of precise terminology
- Beyond the primates
- The CNP-2018 road map
- Capabilities of LCA-m
- Capabilities of LCA-c
- Hominins prior to 'Homo sapiens'
- Post-biological evolution in 'Homo sapiens'
- Envoi
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Index
