Washington, Nov 12 (Inditop.com) If humans are genetically related to chimps, why did our brains develop the innate ability for language and speech while theirs did not?
Scientists suspect that part of the answer to the mystery lies in a gene called FOXP2. When mutated, FOXP2 can disrupt speech and language in humans.
Now, a University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) and Emory study reveals major differences between how the human and chimp versions of FOXP2 work, perhaps explaining why language is unique to humans.
The findings provide insight into the evolution of the human brain and may point to possible drug targets for human disorders characterised by speech disruption, such as autism and schizophrenia.
“Earlier research suggests that the amino acid composition of human FOXP2 changed rapidly around the same time that language emerged in modern humans,” said Daniel Geschwind, professor of human genetics at the David Geffen School at UCLA.
“Ours is the first study to examine the effect of these amino acid substitutions in FOXP2 in human cells,” he said.
“We showed that the human and chimp versions of FOXP2 not only look different but function differently too,” said Geschwind, currently a visiting professor at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London.
“Our findings may shed light on why human brains are born with the circuitry for speech and language and chimp brains are not,” Geschwind said, according to an UCLA release.
These findings were published Wednesday in the online edition of Nature.
