Experimental verification of a hypothesis on the early evolutionary process of linguistic ability - using the macaque model

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K14824
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Applied anthropology
• Research Institution: Kyoto University
• Principal Investigator: HIRASAKI Eishi 京都大学, 霊長類研究所, 准教授 (70252567)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 正高 信男 京都大学, 霊長類研究所, 教授 (60192746) ; 後藤 幸織 京都大学, 霊長類研究所, 准教授 (10645584)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: アタッチメント / 社会探索 / 前頭前皮質 / 補足運動野 / 二足歩行 / 視覚刺激

Outline of Final Research Achievements

It has been considered that changes in the neural bases for motor control/coordination and the increased importance of the mother-child attachment during development process were deeply involved in the early stage of the evolution of language ability. In this study, we investigated neural bases for bipedal locomotion and attachment-dependent social exploration by the near-infrared spectroscopy, and tried to identify the areas concerning the proficiency of these behaviors. Experimental approaches using human and macaque subjects revealed that the brain areas for bipedal control and social exploration are both in the prefrontal cortex. It has not been clarified whether the areas for these two kinds of behavior are simply located close to each other or they are functionally related sharing some parts of the neural network. Measurements with a higher resolution technique will clarify this issue in future studies.

Free Research Field

Biological Anthropology