Essentials: The Neuroscience of Speech, Language & Music | Dr. Erich Jarvis

“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. The brain regions I mentioned are directly adjacent to each other.”

“When we look at the genetic data from these ancestral hominids 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, but I think it's been there for at least between 500,000 to a million years.”

“Some of these genes, actually a number of them, that control neuroconnectivity were turned off in the speech circuit. We started to realize the function of these genes are to repel connections from forming—repulsive molecules. And so when you turn them off, they allow certain connections to form that normally would have not formed. So by turning it off, you got to gain a function for speech.”

“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 mate 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.”

“When it was damaged in a speech-like pathway in these birds, what we found is that they started to stutter as the brain region recovered. It's now known, they call this neurogenic stuttering in humans, where damage to the basal ganglia or some type of disruption to the basal ganglia at a young age also causes stuttering in humans.”

“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.”