Cantalupo C, Hopkins W D
Division of Psychobiology and Living Links Center, Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA.
Nature. 2001 Nov 29;414(6863):505. doi: 10.1038/35107134.
Brodmann's area 44 delineates part of Broca's area within the inferior frontal gyrus of the human brain and is a critical region for speech production, being larger in the left hemisphere than in the right - an asymmetry that has been correlated with language dominance. Here we show that there is a similar asymmetry in this area, also with left-hemisphere dominance, in three great ape species (Pan troglodytes, Pan paniscus and Gorilla gorilla). Our findings suggest that the neuroanatomical substrates for left-hemisphere dominance in speech production were evident at least five million years ago and are not unique to hominid evolution.
布罗德曼44区勾勒出人类大脑额下回内布罗卡区的一部分,是言语产生的关键区域,在左半球比右半球更大——这种不对称性与语言优势相关。我们在此表明,在三种类人猿物种(黑猩猩、倭黑猩猩和大猩猩)中,该区域也存在类似的不对称性,同样是左半球占主导。我们的研究结果表明,言语产生中左半球占主导的神经解剖学基础至少在500万年前就已显现,并非人类进化所独有。