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jake-head-shot.jpgJake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine focusing in Neuroscience. He is due to graduate in 2032. He received a BS and a MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University -- where he spent most of his time drinking heavily and building vegetable catapults instead of learning information that would now be eminently useful. When he is not failing terrifically to perform his sworn duties, he enjoys watching bad movies, ethnic food, and running.

Pure Pedantry is a blog about science -- social sciences and otherwise -- as well as academic and scientific culture. No one can live on science alone, so I also like to dwell on pop culture, periodically explore the humanities, and indulge in other types of geeky goodness.

Jake is joined periodically by two wonderful guest bloggers: Kara Contreary and Kate Seip. See the About Page.

DISCLAIMERS: 1) Jake Young is not a licensed physician (yet). He is merely a medical student. The information published on this site is not intended for use in medical decision making. Please seek advice from a licensed, medical professional before making any health decisions. 2) The opinions expressed are my own or those of my co-bloggers. They do not represent the views of SEED magazine or the educational establishments we currently attend.

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Baboons show handedness for language gestures

Category: LanguageNeuroscience
Posted on: June 14, 2006 2:48 PM, by Jake Young

Baboons show handedness in communicative gestures, tending to be right-handed. This paper analyzed the handedness of baboons to see if they were more likely to use their right or their left hands for communication.

Here is a key figure.


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We know that there is a connection between handedness and the lateralization of language in humans. Humans are primarily right-handed, and the vast majority of right-handed people have their language functions lateralized to their left hemisphere. Left-handed people -- though the distinction is not as clear cut -- also usually show language function in primarily in the left hemisphere. Chimps also show handedness for motor tasks.

The authors argue that data suggests that language emerged from a lateralized cortex for motor gestures:

From a comparative viewpoint, regarding our results and the literature, we suggest the existence of a continuity between asymmetries of speech related gestures and asymmetries of communicative gestures in chimpanzees and now in baboons, even though the degree of population-level right-handedness is lower in non-human primates than in humans. From an evolutionary viewpoint, we suggest that the neuroanatomical substrate of manual communication controlled by the left cerebral hemisphere may have existed in their common ancestor at least 30 million years ago and may be considered as the precursor of the human language area. Our results hence bring additional support to the view that lateralization for language in humans may have evolved from a gestural system of communication lateralized in the left hemisphere.

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