Marseille, France (ots) – A look into the brain of a newborn baboon baby can already predict which hand it will prefer to communicate with after weaning, according to a study by a research team that includes several scientists from the French CNRS and the Max Planck Institute.
Almost 70% of newborn baboons, like human babies, have a larger “planum temporale” region in the left hemisphere of the brain than in the right hemisphere, a region that is crucial for human language. In the study, published June 5 in the journal Nature Communications, the scientists found that only these left-asymmetric baboons began to communicate with their right hand through gestures as they grew older. The other 30% of infant baboons were equally likely to become left- or right-handed. “Our discovery suggests that this brain asymmetry is not only a prerequisite for language development in humans, but more generally for communicative properties that monkey gestures and human language have in common,” emphasizes Yannick Becker, lead author of the study.
To reach this conclusion, the team conducted behavioral observations on a group of young monkeys whose brain asymmetries they had previously measured using noninvasive MRI images taken at birth. This allowed them to identify the preferred hand for one of the most common gestures in the communication repertoire: rubbing or clapping the hand on the ground to threaten a conspecific.
This study sheds new light on the link between gesture and language in primate evolution. “This gestural trace could have promising clinical implications for patients undergoing brain surgery, particularly determining the language-dominant hemisphere through simple measurements of gestural asymmetries to minimize the risk of postoperative language impairment,” explains Adrien Meguerditchian, last author of the study.
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Inquiries & Contact:
Dr. Yannick Becker, Postdoc, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Beckery@cbs.mpg.de
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