A team of neuroscientists from MIT and several European universities have found a genetic mutation that occurred more than half a million years ago and that could play a key role in humans developing their unique natural ability to create and understand speech and language.
The human version of a gene called Foxp2 facilitates the transformation of new experiences into routine procedures. In fact, when scientists inserted this gene into mice, they learned much faster to get out of a maze than normal mice and were better able to form new synapses, or connections between neurons.
This finding indicates that Foxp2 must have been a key component in human linguistic learning , which involves translating experiences, such as hearing the word glass when they show us a glass of water, and automatically associating them with other objects that perform similar functions, according to Ann Graybiel, Professor at MIT, member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and lead author of the study: ” The gene that made it possible for us to speak is related to a special form of learning that leads us to form conscious automatic associations based on objects around us ”.
All animal species communicate with their fellow human beings, but only humans can generate and understand language . Foxp2 is one of the genes that have contributed to the development of these abilities, according to neuroscientists.
The gene was first identified in a group of relatives who had serious speech and understanding difficulties, and whose DNA incorporated a mutated version of that gene.
