@YannickBecker7

Brain 🧠 evolution 🐒 & language 🙊 | sub-group evolution at rg Cognitive Neurogenetics (Sofie Valk) MPICBS, Germany | incoming Atip-avenir group leader CRNL

yannickbecker.weebly.com
Joined December 2020
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🚨 Language connection FOUND in chimpanzees? 🧠🗣️ For years, scientists thought the key to human language was a fibre connection, missing in chimp brains. New high-res brain scans just changed the game. 👀🐒 📖 Read the full story: rdcu.be/el857 1/n 🧵👇
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Straight into the lion's den! doi.org/10.5964/bioling.2247… After showing the AF-MTG connection in chimps, I saw a need to tie this to the Faculty of Language and its MERGE core. If AF-MTG underpins FLN, its presence in chimps = continuous evolution from our LCA. @biolinguistics
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Yannick Becker (@ybecker.bsky.social) retweeted
Biolinguistics@biolinguisticsAug 5
New Forum contribution in @biolinguistics by @YannickBecker7: "The Arcuate Fascicle Middle Temporal Gyrus Connection in Chimpanzees: A Missing Link in Language Evolution?" Read/download for free: doi.org/10.5964/bioling.2247… #openaccess
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Patrick Trettenbrein and I wrote an eletter in reply to the great science review article by Arnon and colleagues (2025) that the field has been waiting for! science.org/doi/10.1126/scie…

What enables human language? A biocultural framework

Explaining the origins of language is a key challenge in understanding ourselves as a species. We present an empirical framework that draws on synergies across fields to facilitate robust studies of...

science.org
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We argue, that “departing from our last common ancestor with nonhuman primates, the language system in humans might have been exapted from an already flexible pre-existing system.
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Accordingly, even though a large proportion of modern day human communication is vocal, the key underlying brain infrastructure (still) operates in a flexible and amodal way. In other words, language is flexible because its neural basis is.”
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If you want to learn more, I'm presenting this study tomorrow Fri 16th of May ~10:30am at the Neuro-primatology symposium (@CdP_Ballesta) #neurofrance2025
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9/n Huge kudos to the EBC Consortium behind this work—sourcing naturally or unavoidably deceased primates from the field all across Africa, from sanctuaries and from zoos all across Europe. The future of language research lies in both the lab and the wild. 🧪🌿
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10/n 📖 Read the press release: cbs.mpg.de/2358103/20250515?… With amazing co-authors and funders (here online): @AlfredAnwander @FriedericiLab @TaiChimpProject @AWI_de @maxplanckpress @MPI_CBS @NatureComms @NaturePortfolio @FFyssen

Language connection discovered in chimpanzee brains

Language connection discovered in chimpanzee brains

cbs.mpg.de
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Hey Arcuate freaks and geeks! I first contacted Erin Hecht in 2019. At the time, I was working on my PhD in France on communication correlates of homologous language regions in primates. But what about their interconnections? The article: rdcu.be/eifzU
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Indeed for some reason I got hooked by the arcuate fascicle (or fasciculus). And Erin across the ocean knew about tractography in chimpanzees! At the same time, Bill Hopkins had behavioural data on the same chimpanzees! And Suhas Vijayakumar was an incredible help!
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It turns out that AF-STG is indeed linked to communication (vocal AND gestural)!!! Great that parts of this project are finally seeing the light of day. Thanks to Adrien Meguerditchian (@ERC_Research), @NeuroSchool_mrs, @FFyssen for the support!
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