Language learning is a complex process, but its foundations can be stemmed from a gene mutation, according to researchers. Neuroscientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and select European universities have recently discovered that this gene mutation, which surfaced thousands of years ago, may be responsible for humans' ability to understand and produce speech.
This gene's human version, also known as Foxp2, helps program routine procedures from new experiences. The researchers found that mice who were engineered to express humanized Foxp2 learned to run a maze faster than regular mice.
According to MIT Institute Professor and senior author Ann Graybiel, their findings highlight that Foxp2 might be capable of helping humans transform experiences into a nearly automatic association of a word with objects similar to it. Graybiel, a member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, said that the gene that helped humans to speak may also play a role in a special kind of learning. She added that this learning "takes us from having to make conscious associations in order to act to a nearly automatic-pilot way of acting based on the cues around us."
Graybiel is joined by fellow senior author Wolfgang Enard, an anthropology and human genetics professor at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Germany, along with Christiane Schreiweis, and Ulrich Bornschein of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. Their study recently appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers added that although all animal species have the ability to communicate, humans have the privilege of being able to generate and understand language, thanks to Foxp2 and other genes that contribute to the enhancement of language skills.
According to Genevieve Konopka of the University of Texas, the study provides new perspectives in looking at the evolution of Foxp2 function in the brain, and makes a point on how molecular evolution of one gene could possibly alter behavior.
