Have you ever wondered how you learn to speak or how certain routines and actions seem more automatic? The answer to this question may lie on a specific gene that is related to language.
A new study may now shed light on the relationship between cognitive flexibility and language-why we react on certain activities in autopilot. The research, which was first published in the website of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and written by Anne Trafton, suggests that a language gene may be responsible for that.
This gene is called Foxp2, a mutation that may have happened thousands of years ago. For the scientists, this is one of the genes that separate humans from the rest of the animals. Although all animals have many ways of communicating, it's only humans that have developed languages and learned ways to understand them.
This gene allows us to progress from consciously acting on something based on word associations to doing it on autopilot. For example, when you were young, you were taught by your parents how to say certain words and phrases and you learn by mimicking how they sounded. However, over time, you learn how to speak the words automatically, eventually forming your own sentences. It therefore feels natural rather than consciously being done.
Foxp2 was first discovered through a family who suffered from severe language skill impediment. They had trouble speaking and understanding speech. It turned out they carried the mutated language gene.
By 2009, a team composed of different researchers from universities started experimenting on the gene among many mice that had been engineered to carry the humanized Foxp2. The mice with such gene then acquired neurons that were more efficient and more complex. In order to find a piece of chocolate, mice were trained to follow directions, which the engineered mice mastered within 7 days, 4 days more quickly than those with no humanized gene. In a maze, the engineered mice performed better and faster than the ordinary ones.