Murphy Elliot, Benítez-Burraco Antonio
Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London London, UK.
Department of Philology, University of Huelva Huelva, Spain.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2016 Aug 23;10:422. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00422. eCollection 2016.
Schizophrenia is characterized by marked language deficits, but it is not clear how these deficits arise from the alteration of genes related to the disease. The goal of this paper is to aid the bridging of the gap between genes and schizophrenia and, ultimately, give support to the view that the abnormal presentation of language in this condition is heavily rooted in the evolutionary processes that brought about modern language. To that end we will focus on how the schizophrenic brain processes language and, particularly, on its distinctive oscillatory profile during language processing. Additionally, we will show that candidate genes for schizophrenia are overrepresented among the set of genes that are believed to be important for the evolution of the human faculty of language. These genes crucially include (and are related to) genes involved in brain rhythmicity. We will claim that this translational effort and the links we uncover may help develop an understanding of language evolution, along with the etiology of schizophrenia, its clinical/linguistic profile, and its high prevalence among modern populations.
精神分裂症的特征是明显的语言缺陷，但目前尚不清楚这些缺陷是如何由与该疾病相关的基因改变引起的。本文的目的是帮助弥合基因与精神分裂症之间的差距，并最终支持这样一种观点，即这种情况下语言的异常表现深深植根于导致现代语言产生的进化过程。为此，我们将关注精神分裂症患者大脑如何处理语言，特别是在语言处理过程中其独特的振荡特征。此外，我们将表明，在被认为对人类语言能力进化很重要的一组基因中，精神分裂症候选基因的比例过高。这些基因至关重要地包括（并与）参与大脑节律的基因有关。我们将声称，这种转化研究以及我们发现的联系可能有助于增进对语言进化的理解，以及对精神分裂症的病因、临床/语言特征及其在现代人群中的高患病率的理解。
