ScienceDaily reports on new findings from the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, who say that chimpanzee brains are really close to human brains as far as the parts that do the talking for us. In other words, they could well be doing some talking among themselves that we just haven’t translated yet:
In the new study, the researchers non-invasively scanned the brains of three chimpanzees as they gestured and called to a person in request for food that was out of their reach. Those chimps showed activation in the brain region corresponding to Broca’s area and in other areas involved in complex motor planning and action in humans, the researchers found.
The findings might be interpreted in one of two ways, Taglialatela said.
“One interpretation of our results is that chimpanzees have, in essence, a ‘language-ready brain,’ ” he said. “By this, we are suggesting that apes are born with and use the brain areas identified here when producing signals that are part of their communicative repertoire.
“Alternatively, one might argue that, because our apes were captive-born and producing communicative signals not seen often in the wild, the specific learning and use of these signals ‘induced’ the pattern of brain activation we saw. This would suggest that there is tremendous plasticity in the chimpanzee brain, as there is in the human brain….