Becker Yannick, Sein Julien, Velly Lionel, Giacomino Laura, Renaud Luc, Lacoste Romain, Anton Jean-Luc, Nazarian Bruno, Berne Cammie, Meguerditchian Adrien
Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, UMR 7290, Université Aix-Marseille / CNRS, 13331 Marseille, France; Institut des Neurosciences de la Timone, UMR 7289, Université Aix-Marseille / CNRS, 13005 Marseille, France.
Institut des Neurosciences de la Timone, UMR 7289, Université Aix-Marseille / CNRS, 13005 Marseille, France.
Neuroimage. 2021 Feb 15;227:117575. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117575. Epub 2020 Dec 4.
The "language-ready" brain theory suggests that the infant brain is pre-wired for language acquisition prior to language exposure. As a potential brain marker of such a language readiness, a leftward structural brain asymmetry was found in human infants for the Planum Temporale (PT), which overlaps with Wernicke's area. In the present longitudinal in vivo MRI study conducted in 35 newborn monkeys (Papio anubis), we found a similar leftward PT surface asymmetry. Follow-up rescanning sessions on 29 juvenile baboons at 7-10 months showed that such an asymmetry increases across the two ages classes. These original findings in non-linguistic primate infants strongly question the idea that the early PT asymmetry constitutes a human infant-specific marker for language development. Such a shared early perisylvian organization provides additional support that PT asymmetry might be related to a lateralized system inherited from our last common ancestor with Old-World monkeys at least 25-35 million years ago.
“语言就绪”大脑理论表明，婴儿大脑在接触语言之前就已为语言习得预先布线。作为这种语言就绪状态的潜在大脑标志物，在人类婴儿的颞平面（PT）发现了向左的大脑结构不对称，该区域与韦尼克区重叠。在对35只新生猴子（东非狒狒）进行的当前纵向活体MRI研究中，我们发现了类似的向左PT表面不对称。对29只7至10个月大的幼年狒狒进行的后续重新扫描显示，这种不对称在两个年龄组中都有所增加。在非语言灵长类婴儿中的这些原始发现强烈质疑了早期PT不对称构成人类婴儿特定语言发展标志物的观点。这种早期共享的颞周组织提供了额外的支持，即PT不对称可能与至少在2500万至3500万年前与旧世界猴子的最后一个共同祖先遗传下来的侧化系统有关。
