Functional neuroimaging of human vocalizations and affective speech (2024)

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In the brain of primates, the auditory cortex connects with the frontal lobe via the temporal pole (auditory ventral stream; AVS) and via the inferior parietal lobule (auditory dorsal stream; ADS). The AVS is responsible for sound recognition, and the ADS for sound-localization, voice detection and audiovisual integration. I propose that the primary role of the ADS in monkeys/apes is the perception and response to contact calls. These calls are exchanged between tribe members (e.g., mother-offspring) and are used for monitoring location. Perception of contact calls occurs by the ADS detecting a voice, localizing it, and verifying that the corresponding face is out of sight. The auditory cortex then projects to parieto-frontal visuospatial regions (visual dorsal stream) for searching the caller, and via a series of frontal lobe-brainstem connections, a contact call is produced in return. Because the human ADS processes also speech production and repetition, I further describe a course for the development of speech in humans. I propose that, due to duplication of a parietal region and its frontal projections, and strengthening of direct frontal-brainstem connections, the ADS converted auditory input directly to vocal regions in the frontal lobe, which endowed early with partial vocal control. This enabled offspring to modify their Hominans contact calls with intonations for signaling different distress levels to their mother. Vocal control could then enable question-answer conversations, by offspring emitting a low-level distress call for inquiring about the safety of objects, and mothers responding with high-or low-level distress calls. Gradually, the ADS and the direct frontal-brainstem connections became more robust and vocal control became more volitional. Eventually, individuals were capable of inventing new words and offspring were capable of inquiring about objects in their environment and learning their names via mimicry.

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Phylogenetic reorganization of the basal ganglia: A necessary, but not the only, bridge over a primate Rubicon of acoustic communication

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This review of research will briefly describe my view of the evolution of brain structures involved with learning, memory & speech. The main argument of this paper is to hypothesize possibilities of how humans became vocal or why vocalization makes us different from other animals. This paper will also entail what has been researched by scientists on genetic components along with complex behaviors of human & animals with developed vocal learning . Research will be taken from journals and academic articles that pertain to studies on brain evolution, animal behavior and new research on behavioral genetics. Research suggests that understanding mechanisms of evolution of the brain pathways for complex behaviors are still in developmental stages of research. However, the main goal of this paper is trying to understand how adaptive genetic modifications lead to reconstructing of the brain for vocal learning.

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Very young infants' responses to human and nonhuman primate vocalizations

Sandy Waxman

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From Mimicry to Language: A Neuroanatomically Based Evolutionary Model of the Emergence of Vocal Language

Oren Poliva

The auditory cortex communicates with the frontal lobe via the middle temporal gyrus (auditory ventral stream; AVS) or the inferior parietal lobule (auditory dorsal stream; ADS). Whereas the AVS is ascribed only with sound recognition, the ADS is ascribed with sound localization, voice detection, prosodic perception/production, lip-speech integration, phoneme discrimination, articulation, repetition, phonological long-term memory and working memory. Previously, I interpreted the juxtaposition of sound localization, voice detection, audiovisual integration and prosodic analysis, as evidence that the behavioral precursor to human speech is the exchange of contact calls in non-human primates. Herein, I interpret the remaining ADS functions as evidence of additional stages in language evolution. According to this model, the role of the ADS in vocal control enabled early Homo (Hominans) to name objects using monosyllabic calls, and allowed children to learn their parents' calls by imitating their lip movements. Initially, the calls were forgotten quickly but gradually were remembered for longer periods. Once the representations of the calls became permanent, mimicry was limited to infancy, and older individuals encoded in the ADS a lexicon for the names of objects (phonological lexicon). Consequently, sound recognition in the AVS was sufficient for activating the phonological representations in the ADS and mimicry became independent of lipreading. Later, by developing inhibitory connections between acoustic-syllabic representations in the AVS and phonological representations of subsequent syllables in the ADS, Hominans became capable of concatenating the monosyllabic calls for repeating polysyllabic words (i.e., developed working memory). Finally, due to strengthening of connections between phonological representations in the ADS, Hominans became capable of encoding several syllables as a single representation (chunking). Consequently, Hominans began vocalizing and mimicking/rehearsing lists of words (sentences).

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Primate communication, comparative neurology, and the origin of language re-examined

Horst Steklis

Journal of Human Evolution, 1985

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Functional neuroimaging of human vocalizations and affective speech (2024)
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