ISS 210 1st Edition Lecture 10 Outline of Last Lecture I. Testing the Multiregional hypothesisII. Human and Neanderthal MTDNAIII. Y-guys have it roughIV. The m(y)t maternal mitochondriaV. Haplogroupies on the clockVI. Out of AfricaVII. Middle Eastern male migrationVIII. North America migrationIX. Other EvidenceX. Lice PhylogenyOutline of Current LectureI. The Roots of ConsciousnessII. Increasing Brain SizeIII. Why Language? IV. Structures in the BrainV. Language and ExperienceVI. LanguageVII. The Limbic System or “Mammalian Brain” VIII. Language and Call systemsIX. Back to the Genes X. FOXP2 and the Mystery of SpeechXI. Basic Terms and Concepts XII. Components of Language XIII. Phones XIV. PhonemesXV. MorphemesXVI. SyntaxXVII. Larnyx, Pharnyx, and SpeechXVIII. Neanderthal and Human Vocal TractsXIX. The Neanderthal Hyoid BoneXX. FOXP2 and Speech and Culture Current LectureI. The Roots of Consciousness– Consciousness is the product of our brain, which in turn is the product of evolution – Components of the human psyche– Cognition: learning, logic, reasoning, and problem solving– Emotion: grief, depression, excitement, and elation– Consciousness: that part of the psyche that allows us to know what we know – That “inner eye” that allows us to experience our own feelings and behaviors andto interpret the feelings and behaviors of others “empathy” II. Increasing Brain Size– Hominid trend but not necessarily due to inexorable natural selection within one lineage– Perhaps due to the preferential survival of bigger-brained species rather than within lineage fine tuning – Size per se is an indicator of intelligence or cognitive complexity; brain organization is a separate matterIII. Why Language? – Hunting and Naming Hypothesis: – The physical world of non-primates is no more complicated than that of primates– Locating food– Predator alerts– Consciousness gives individuals advantage within the species but does it aid species in competition with others?IV. Structures in the Brain– Well-conserved; certain functions are always found in the same place in the brains of different animals– Built on older structures– The higher functions are mediated by structures principally devoted to lower functions– 19th century anatomists studied brain injuries to understand locate brain functions for language and memory – Broca studied people with speech disorders who could not sustain articulate speech or were incapable of complete sentences– Wernicke studied people who could not understand spoken language although some could read V. Language and Experience– Humans inhabit a world of words that bring meaning to our experience and shape our experience of the world– Hopi language doesn’t allow two events to happen at once– Separates time and space – Tamil requires the speaker to say HOW he or she knows “it rained” – Language means we know what we know– We construct a conscious mental image of the world we live in VI. Language– All human societies possess language– All human individuals possess the ability to learn language– The manner in which children acquire all languages suggests an innate and generalized ability for such acquisition – How language different from a call system? – Language is an object-oriented, learned system of communication existing alongside an older, emotion based set of signals (a call system) common to human beings and animals VII. The Limbic System or “Mammalian Brain” – The limbic system is a group of structures just above the brain stem – Regulates basic bodily processes, such as heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and levels of sugar in the blood, through the hypothalamus– Experienced as emotional responses– Vocalizations– Feelings: Tears, lumps in the throat and knots in the stomachVIII. Language and Call systems– Voluntary Vocalization: – Controlled by the cerebral cortex– Allows for spatial and temporal displacement– Emotional Stimulus for Vocalizations: – Controlled by the limbic system – Visual is Supplemental: – The message is conveyed by words alone – Facial expression may have limbic components but its subject to control as with actors – Visual is Essential– Complete information requires sight– Multimodal display of vocalization and body movement– Facial expression controlled by the limbic system; “hard wired”– Words are Arbitrary: – Words and their referent are arbitrary – Consider the days of the week– Calls or Innate – The predator alert calls of Howler monkeys are fixed– Open:– Allows for the novel combination of sounds to express ideas and descriptions– Imagine a flying leopard – Closed: – All sounds are mutually exclusive – Howler monkeys cannot create a chirp to warn others about our flying leopard IX. Back to the Genes – The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology: DNA, RNA, and Protein – If a particular gene is making a lot of RNA in our brain and the brain is making a lot of tissue, then the gene is being expressed a lot in that tissue– If a gene is being expressed at a high rate in our brain and not in the brain of a chimpanzee, then were on to something – Microarray experiments of human, chimp and macaque cerebral cortexes – Indicate some 200 genes in humans that are expressed at a much higher level– Humans and chimps may share 99% of their genome but look different because of the regulation of genes – Altering a single human gene that controls 50 proteins can have a large effect in expression– Humans and chimps have different genes that produce a protein tectorin that is critical component of a membrane in our inner ear– Mutations cause the bearer to respond poorly to frequency changes in sound and to understand speech well– It is important to language and it appears this trait has been strongly selected in humansX. FOXP2 and the Mystery of Speech– The FOXP2 gene makes a protein that regulates the development of several regions of the brain – A genetic defect in FOXP2 results in developmental verbal dyspraxia leaving the individual unable to move the mouth correctly in sequence, and with grammar deficits and repetitive language usage– In a British study, members of several generations of the KE family struggle to control their lips and tongue to form words and to use and understand grammar XI. Basic Terms and Concepts – Every human child has the ability to:– Transform surface