Birds and Human learning language genes

[trehinp]

Dear all,

I've received an amazing piece of news concerning language imitation and learning in Birds.

A group of researchers have determined that there are some common aspects between human and birds with regard to the genetic basis for language learning :

Birds Share 'Language' Gene with Humans
Scientific American.com March 31, 2004
CLICK HERE  FOR URL

The Scientific American article quotes the : Journal of Neuroscience :
<<  "We found that the levels of FoxP2 seem to be increasing at times just before the bird begins to change its songs," Jarvis says. "So this is consistent with a cause-and-effect role, in which the gene switches on, allowing the song-learning circuitry to become more plastic, which allows the birds to imitate sounds.">>

More details from a Duke University report can be found at :
CLICK HERE

 and from the famous Max Plank Institute :
CLICK HERE

One must remember that the discovery of FoxP2 genes in relation to language development was used as evidence for a major shift in human cognitive abilities to learn languages :
CLICK HERE

So the discovery that some birds share with us, human beings, a specific gene for learning language shows the this gene must have existed long before primates existed.

This lives a lot of food for thoughts doesn't it ?

Yours sincelely

Paul Trehin
PS: More on birds surprising abilities on the Parietal & Mobiliary Art discussion dated of April 4th 2004.

[trehinp]

In relation to my previous post on this topic, here is a piece of information that I just retrieved whild looking for more background on the subject of FoxP2:


Abstracts from the 8th Congress of the German Primate Society
Leipzig, October 2003
PLENARY TALKS
An Ape Perspective on Human Uniqueness
Svante Pääbo
In defining which traits are unique and those that are shared between contemporary humans and their closest living and extinct evolutionary relatives, we may be able approach some of the genetic traits that define humans as a species. Our laboratory attempts to achieve this using several different approaches, some of which will be discussed here. In order to provide a preliminary insight into the divergence of the human and chimpanzee genomes, we have sequenced over 10,000 random DNA fragments from the chimpanzee. Alignment to corresponding human DNA sequences reveals an average genome-wide sequence difference between the two species of 1.2%. As expected, the X chromosome is the most conserved, while the Y chromosome has diverged the most. Surprisingly, the average amount of sequence difference that has accumulated on the different autosomes differs significantly. To understand better the evolutionary forces that affect human genes, we have sequenced 5,055 expressed sequence tags from the chimpanzee and compared them to their human counterparts. The comparison to intergenic DNA sequences suggests that a substantial proportion of silent sites in protein-coding regions are deleterious and subject to negative selection. Furthermore, an excess of divergence relative to diversity in 5'UTRs suggests that positive selection has affected the 5'UTRs of genes since the divergence of humans and chimpanzees. We study the relative levels of expression of genes in six regions of the brains of humans, chimpanzees and orangutans. About 15% of all genes have changed their level of expression between humans and chimpanzees in at least one region of the brain. The patterns of gene expression changes will be discussed. In collaboration with S. Fisher and A. Monaco at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford, UK, we have studied the molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in the development of speech and language. We sequenced the cDNAs that encode the FOXP2 protein in chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, rhesus macaque and mouse, and compared them to the human cDNA. In addition, we investigated the intra-specific variation of the FOXP2 gene in humans. The results strongly suggest that FOXP2 has been the target of selection during recent human evolution.

It would be nice to have the response of  Svante Pääbo to the discovery that some birds do have a very similar variation of FoxP2 genes.

Indeed the discovery that some birds share with us, human beings, a specific gene for learning language shows the this gene must have existed long before primates existed. How do we interpret this ? How was it transmited through evolution to man only and not to other primates ? Did the FoxP2 genes became extinct in primates other than men ? Is the Last Common Ancestor to be looked for before the apparition of primates ?

Answers to these questions may have a major impact on the way we understand human evolution...

Paul Trehin

[trehinp]

Paul,

I think other primates DO have the FoxP2 gene.  I think the difference that made the news is that in other primates, it does not "turn on" for speech, like it does in birds and humans (IIRC).

Anyway, it is not the fact that birds and humans have this specific gene that is the important part of it's significance.  It's significance is that in both birds and humans, something in this gene "turns on" when humans use speech or birds chirp.

This FoxP2  "turn-on" again may be a common LCA trait (do lizards chirp?) or may be parallel evolution.  But either way, it is no reason to make one go searching for an earlier ape/human LCA.

Cheers,
Dar

Dar,

The references I got from Duke University says : "When evolutionary geneticists compared the DNA sequence of the normal human FOXP2 gene with nonhuman primates and other species, they found that humans have a specific sequence variation not found in any other mammal". So it goes even farther than other primates.
(http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/genome/genesandbody/hg05n005.html)

Your analysis is probably right though. It is a variation in the FoxP2 that gives both human beings and vocal-learning birds the capability to aquire a "language". Note that t isn't just the production of sounds, but the ability to learn that is concerned.

About lizards, the same reference website states "Scharff, Jarvis and their colleagues confirmed that all the non-mammals they studied, including crocodiles, did have a FOXP2 gene."

However, there remain differences between the gene in birds  and the gene in human beings : " And although the genes in humans and song-learning birds were almost identical (98 per cent), the song-learning birds did not have the specific variation characteristic of humans."
But I would think that the rest of the cognitive abilities of birds brains can also account for the fact that they didn't develop a fully articulated language, even though they had the capability to learn their songs.

I agree with you, and I don't have the knowledge of genetics to understand how that similitude os FoxP2 genes only remained active in some birds (not all) and human beings.

Another interesting aspect comes from "absolute pitch" which is found in many birds and in human infants. It disapears generaly un human beings as language starts to develop. It remains active, though, in a large proportion of people with autism(a developmental disorder). But that's another topic...

Yours very friendly.

Paul

[Daryl Habel]

Hi Paul,

Like you, I don't have a knowledge of the specifics adequate to understand everything about the significance of the variation between Humans and birds in the FoxP2 gene.  However, the very fact that [apparently] all birds, [and crocodiles] and primates do possess this gene, means that the "switch on" [whatever variation in the gene that amounts to] is probably a "paralellism" that evolved separately and relatively recently (they are guessing 50,000 years ago in humans?) to serve the same adaptive function in both humans and [some] birds.

To the best of my poor understanding.

In other words, it's no reason to go in search of an earlier last common ancestor of humans and other primates.

Thanks for the added information and references.  It does help clear away a few cobwebs in my mind about the FoxP2 gene.

Dar

[trehinp]

Hi Paul,

However, the very fact that [apparently] all birds, [and crocodiles] and primates do possess this gene, means that the "switch on" [whatever variation in the gene that amounts to] is probably a "paralellism" that evolved separately and relatively recently (they are guessing 50,000 years ago in humans?) to serve the same adaptive function in both humans and [some] birds.

Dar

Dear Dar,

The variation of FoxP2 genes is minimal betwen Human beings and "Birds who learn their songs" (by opposition to birds with an innate song), not all birds.

Crocodiles have the foxP2 gene but it is not as close to the human one as the one of "Birds who learn their songs".

Any other primates, and further more any other mamalians, have much greater differences with the Human FoxP2 gene.

Could you explain the reasoning for your second statement about a late (50,000 years ago) adaptation ?

I was convinced by my previous readings on the subject that Human language appeared far earlier than that. Some authors push as far as "homo erectus". But I am ready to accept a new analysis.

"Objectivity is not an unobtainable emptying of mind
but a willingness to abandon a set of preferences
when the world seems to work in a contrary way."
   
Stephen J. Gould


In fact, before the publication on FoxP2 in "Birds that learn their songs" the discovery of FoxP2 was used as an argument for late apparition of language in Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

I think there is more to understand here...

Thanks for participating in the discussion.

Yours very friendly.

Paul

[Daryl Habel]

Could you explain the reasoning for your second statement about a late (50,000 years ago) adaptation ?
[snip]
In fact, before the publication on FoxP2 in "Birds that learn their songs" the discovery of FoxP2 was used as an argument for late apparition of language in Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

I think there is more to understand here...

Thanks for participating in the discussion.

Yours very friendly.

Paul,

My dating of 50,000 years ago for the adaptation is a direct reference to the guess made by Stanley Ambrose to support his gene (some say "magic")  theory for human language capability, which he sees as the reason for the "revolution" made by "modern humans" at 50,000 BP.  Basically, about the same thing I've quoted from you above:  "an argument for late apparition of language in Homo sapiens sapiens."

I have no idea how accurate this 50,000 BP estimate is, but I doubt if it's very precise.  Ambrose used the date because it fits his theory.

I'm sure there's more to be learned about FoxP2.

Dar

[trehinp]

My dating of 50,000 years ago for the adaptation is a direct reference to the guess made by Stanley Ambrose to support his gene (some say "magic")  theory for human language capability, which he sees as the reason for the "revolution" made by "modern humans" at 50,000 BP.  Basically, about the same thing I've quoted from you above:  "an argument for late apparition of language in Homo sapiens sapiens."
Dar

Thanks for the reference. I didn't know about the research of Stanley Ambrose.

I went to one of the several websites that talk about his work. On the latest website I found, he says that Neanderthal had language, albeit not as elegant as modern men...

I quote fropm the BBC site dated  7th June 2004 :

"The Neanderthal hyoid bone, which holds the voicebox in place, shows they were capable of complex speech. But their sentences were probably basic. "I think they spoke in the imperative a lot: 'Give me the object' rather than 'Could you perhaps give me the object,' as modern humans might say," says Professor Stanley Ambrose of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/cavemen/chronology/contentpage5.shtml

All other references on Stanley Ambrose are older(2001/2002) and then he was dating language appearance arouns 300,000 years ago :
" Complex tool-making, which required fine motor skills, problem-solving and task planning, he argues, may have influenced the evolution of the frontal lobe, and co-evolved with the gift of grammatical language 300,000 years ago."

http://www.news.uiuc.edu/scitips/01/03evolution.html

I am not convinced, personnally, of a major cognitive change around 50,000 years ago, as R. Klein, S. Mithen, I. Tattersall, and a few other researchers hypothesised.

A technology acceleration was already visible in Mousterian industry, long before 50K years ago. As I argued in another post, it may even be that the Mousterian technology may have been borrowed by Modern Men from Neanderthalians. After all they had had a longer experience...

I have also expressed my view disconnecting this overall technology evolution from the first figurative art (known and which got preserved)  (see my post on the "Radical or progressive evolution" thread in the "Parietal & Mobiliary Art." section of this forum. Actually, for more precise wording and the attached bibliography, see the text I put in on my website :  

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/gilles.trehin.urville/art_evolution_or_revolution.htm

Back on language, I must contact again Dr Michael Corbalis (the author of "From Hand to Mouth, The Origins of Language", Princeton University Press, Princeton 2002). Last time we exchanged mail he was under the shock of the discovery of FoxP2 Gene link to language...

Yours very friendly.

Paul  

[Daryl Habel]

Paul,

It was Richard Klein, not Stanley Ambrose, who advocates a neurological mutation for language at 50,000 years ago.  

I led you astray with Ambrose.  Look for Klein's ideas, instead.  It is Klein who advocates this 50,000 year BP "revolution" and who gave the 50,000 BP guess for the FoxP2 adaptation to back his theory.

Again,
I'm sorry for leading you astray with Ambrose.  My three-quarterzheimers must be acting up again.

Dar