Contradicting new dual-pathway models of language evolution, cortico-striatal-thalamic
circuitry disambiguate uncertainties in affective prosody and propositional linguistic content …

In response to: Brain mechanisms of acoustic communication in humans and nonhuman
primates: An evolutionary perspective Abstract: Ackermann et al.'s arguments in the target …

Ackermann et al.'s phylogenetic account of speech argues that the basal ganglia imbue
speech with emotive content. However, a body of work on auditory/emotive processing is …

The model presented in the target article is biased towards a cognitive-symbolic
understanding of language, thus ignoring its other important aspects. Possible relationships …

Any account of “what is special about the human brain”(Passingham 2008) must specify the
neural basis of our unique ability to produce speech and delineate how these remarkable …

The most frequent criticism of the target article is the lack of clear separability of human
speech data relative to neuroethological data. A rationalization for this difference was sought …

Abstracts Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot
be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that …

We present two arguments why physical adaptations for vocalization may be as important as
neural adaptations. First, fine control over vocalization is not easy for physical reasons, and …

In the first year of life, infants' utterances change from high-intensity crying to low-intensity
acoustic sound strings, acoustically labelling the first word. This transition implies:(1) …

The brain contains ubiquitous reciprocal bottom-up and top-down intercortical and
thalamocortical pathways. These resonating feedback pathways may be essential for stable …