Broca area homologue's asymmetry reflects gestural communication lateralisation in monkeys (Papio anubis)
- CNRS, Aix-Marseille University, France
Abstract
Manual gestures and speech recruit a common neural network, involving Broca's area in the left hemisphere. Such speech-gesture integration gave rise to theories on the critical role of manual gesturing in the origin of language. Within this evolutionary framework, research on gestural communication in our closer primate relatives has received renewed attention for investigating its potential language-like features. Here, using in-vivo anatomical MRI in 50 baboons, we found that communicative gesturing is related to Broca homologue's marker in monkeys, namely the ventral portion of the Inferior Arcuate sulcus (IA sulcus). In fact, both direction and degree of gestural communication's handedness - but not handedness for object manipulation - are associated and correlated with contralateral depth asymmetry at this exact IA sulcus portion. In other words, baboons that prefer to communicate with their right hand have a deeper left-than-right IA sulcus, than those preferring to communicate with their left hand and vice versa. Interestingly, in contrast to handedness for object manipulation, gestural communication's lateralisation is not associated to the Central sulcus depth asymmetry, suggesting a double dissociation of handedness' types between manipulative action and gestural communication. It is thus not excluded that this specific gestural lateralisation signature within the baboons' frontal cortex might reflect a phylogenetical continuity with language-related Broca lateralisation in humans.
Data availability
The behavioural, neuro-anatomical and statistic code data that support the findings of this study are available in "OSF Storage" with the identifier DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/DPXS5.https://osf.io/dpxs5/?view_only=f406ad972edd43e485e5e4076bae0f78
Article and author information
Author details
Konstantina Margiotoudi
Adrien Meguerditchian
Funding
H2020 European Research Council (716931 - GESTIMAGE - ERC-2016-STG)
- Adrien Meguerditchian
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-12-PDOC-0014-01)
- Adrien Meguerditchian
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-16-CONV-0002)
- Adrien Meguerditchian
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Timothy E Behrens, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All baboons were housed in social groups at the Station de Primatologie CNRS (UPS 846, Rousset, France; Agreement number for conducting experiments on vertebrate animals: D13-087-7) and have free access to outdoor areas connected to indoor areas. Wooden and metallic, ethologically approved, structures enrich the enclosures. Feeding times are held four times a day with seeds, monkey pellets and fresh fruits and vegetables. Water is available ad libitum. The study was approved by the "C2EA-71 Ethical Committee of Neurosciences" (INT Marseille) under the number APAFIS#13553-201802151547729. The experimental procedure complied with the current French laws and the European directive 86/609/CEE.
Version history
- Preprint posted: February 9, 2021 (view preprint)
- Received: May 19, 2021
- Accepted: February 1, 2022
- Accepted Manuscript published: February 2, 2022 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: February 15, 2022 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2022, Becker et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Broca area homologue's asymmetry reflects gestural communication lateralisation in monkeys (Papio anubis)
eLife 11:e70521.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70521
Further reading
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Probing memory of a complex visual image within a few hundred milliseconds after its disappearance reveals significantly greater fidelity of recall than if the probe is delayed by as little as a second. Classically interpreted, the former taps into a detailed but rapidly decaying visual sensory or ‘iconic’ memory (IM), while the latter relies on capacity-limited but comparatively stable visual working memory (VWM). While iconic decay and VWM capacity have been extensively studied independently, currently no single framework quantitatively accounts for the dynamics of memory fidelity over these time scales. Here, we extend a stationary neural population model of VWM with a temporal dimension, incorporating rapid sensory-driven accumulation of activity encoding each visual feature in memory, and a slower accumulation of internal error that causes memorized features to randomly drift over time. Instead of facilitating read-out from an independent sensory store, an early cue benefits recall by lifting the effective limit on VWM signal strength imposed when multiple items compete for representation, allowing memory for the cued item to be supplemented with information from the decaying sensory trace. Empirical measurements of human recall dynamics validate these predictions while excluding alternative model architectures. A key conclusion is that differences in capacity classically thought to distinguish IM and VWM are in fact contingent upon a single resource-limited WM store.
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Our ability to recall details from a remembered image depends on a single mechanism that is engaged from the very moment the image disappears from view.
