Symposium Topics

The first symposium in the series focused on the Evolution of Language; the second will focus on Language, Cognition and Motor Control Systems, and will be held at Stony Brook University, May 29-31, 2009.

The last decade has seen many exciting advances in our understanding of natural language as connected with, and to some extent rooted in, the other neural systems, particularly motor systems. We are interested in exploring those connections & roots in the symposium. This symposium brings together participants from a broad array of disciplines to discuss the following topics:

Genetics/FOXP2

In 2001 a gene, known as "FOXP2", was implicated in an inherited speech and language disorder. This discovery and subsequent research yielded much discussion across multiple disciplines regarding its potential involvement in language and in human evolution. Rather than being a/the "language gene" as popularised in the media, FOXP2 is a regulatory factor with an ancient evolutionary history, found in similar form in diverse vertebrates. Convergent evidence from different species suggests that the gene may be important for plasticity of neural circuits involved in sensorimotor integration and motor-skill learning, and that its role(s) in human speech and language may be built on these functions.

Embodied Cognition

a number of recent experimental studies have shown that the processing of language involving motion concepts appears to activate the very areas of the motor cortex that are responsible for executing the corresponding motion. It thus appears "as if" motion concepts are somehow embedded within the neural systems responsible for motion itself. This suggests a broader theory of concepts embedded within neural systems responsible for actions, gestures, audition, etc.

Sign Language

Studies of Sign Languages have confirmed that although sign language deploys gestures, it appears to operate independently of the gestural system. For example, small children who know perfectly well how to point to things, including themselves, will use a gesture pointing to themselves as a name for their mothers because mothers have used it to refer to themselves. In other words they understand the distinction between gesture as linguistic (a name) and, as it were, gesture as gesture.

Handedness

Differences in handedness evidently involve reorganization of motor control systems. Interestingly, familiar left-handedness also seems to be implicated in distinct linguistic behaviors, including some quite surprising ones involving linguistic perception.

Action & Planning

It has been argued that the hierarchical organization of concepts involved in motor planning foreshadow hierarchical organization of linguistic structure, possibly that one is a precursor to the other. More radically, it has also been suggested that hierarchically structured action might in fact be given compositional model theoretic semantics analogous to what is assigned to natural language sentences.

Mirror Neurons

Many researchers have become interested in mirror neurons as a potential key to natural language understanding and indeed to the evolution of natural language. We will have number of people reporting on mirror neurons.