Dr. Erich Jarvis

“If the speech pathways are next to the movement pathways, what I discover is by dancing, it is helping me think. It is helping keep my brain fresh. I argue, if you want to stay cognitively intact into your old age, you better be moving. And you better be doing it consistently, whether it's dancing, walking, running, and also practicing speech.”

“I don't think there is any good evidence for a separate language module. Instead, there is a speech production pathway that's controlling our larynx, controlling our jaw muscles, that has built within it all the complex algorithms for spoken language. And there is the auditory pathway that has built within it all the complex algorithms for understanding speech, not separate from a language module.”

“I think that the brain pathways that control speech evolved out of the brain pathways that control body movement. And that's when you talk about Italian, French, English, and so forth, each one of those languages come with a learned set of gestures that you can communicate with. Now how is that related to other animals? Well, Coco, a gorilla, who is raised with humans for 39 years or more, learned how to do gesture communication, learn how to sign language, so to speak, right? But Coco couldn't produce those sounds.”

“And most recently, we discovered not only the actual circuitry and the connectivity are similar, but the underlying genes that are expressed in these brain regions in a specialized way, different from the rest of the brain, are also similar between humans and songbirds and parrots. So all the way down to the genes, and now we're finding the specific mutations are also similar, not always identical but similar, which indicates remarkable convergence for so-called complex behavior in species separated by 300 million years from the common ancestor.”

“And when we look at the genetic data from these ancestral hominids that, you know, where we can look at genes that are involved in learned vocal communication, they have the same sequence as we humans do for genes that function in speech circuits. So I think Neanderthals had spoken language. I'm not going to say it's as advanced as what it is in humans. I don't know. But I think it's been there for at least between 500,000 to a million years.”

“That has led a number of people to hypothesize that the evolution of spoken language, of speech, evolved first for singing, for this more emotional kind of made attraction, like the Jennifer Lopez, the Ricky Martin kind of songs and so forth. And then later on, it became used for abstract communication like we're doing now.”

“That visual signal then goes to your speech pathway in the motor cortex in front here in Broca's area, and you silently speak what you read in your brain without moving your muscles. Sometimes, actually, if you put electrodes, EMG electrodes on your laryngeal muscles, even on verge you can do this, you'll see activity there while reading or trying to speak silently, even though no sound is coming out. And so your speech pathway is now speaking what you're reading.”

“And it's now known, they call this neurogenics stuttering in humans, would damage to the basal ganglia or some type of disruption to the basal ganglia at a young age also causes stuttering in humans. And even those who are born with stuttering, it's often the basal ganglia that's disrupted in some other brain circuit. And we think the speech part of the basal ganglia.”

“And I'm moving or using the circuitry in my brain to do control a whole big body. You need a lot of brain tissue to do that. And so I argue, if you want to stay cognitively intact into your old age, you better be moving. And you better be doing it consistently, whether it's dancing, walking, running, and also practicing speech, oratory speech and so forth, or singing, is controlling the brain circuits that are moving your facial musculature. And it's going to keep your cognitive circuits also in tune.”