Article published In:
Evolutionary Linguistic TheoryVol. 1:2 (2019) ► pp.162–174
The anatomical foundations of language dominance
A selective review of the available data
The evidence about asymmetries between the two hemispheres in human and non-human species may contribute to the current debate about language evolution. Here I present a selective review of the available data, limited to the macroscopic and microscopic anatomy of the main language areas. Both post-mortem and imaging studies confirm the presence of a leftward asymmetry in the Planum Temporale (PT) region in humans; in the case of Broca’s area the evidence is less consistent. The data about non-human primates also support the presence of a leftward asymmetry of the PT area in apes and monkeys. Studies on large populations, combining quantitative structural imaging of cortex and white matter, functional imaging measures during language tasks, and detailed assessments of handedness are needed to assess the relevance of comparative brain anatomy data to the investigation of language evolution.
Keywords: Planum Temporale, brain anatomy, neuroanatomy, Broca’s area, connectomics
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Hemispheric asymmetries in humans: Planum Temporale
- 3.Broca’s area
- 4.White matter asymmetries and connectomics
- 5.Conclusions
-
References
References
Aboitiz, F.
(2012) Gestures, vocalizations, and memory in language origins. Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience, 41, Article 2. 
Allendorfer, J. B., Hernando, K. A., Hossain, S., Nenert, R., Holland, S. K., Szaflarski, J. P.
(2016) Arcuate fasciculus asymmetry has a hand in language function but not handedness. Human brain mapping, 37(9), 3297–3309.
Amunts, K., Lenzen, M., Friederici, A. D., Schleicher, A., Morosan, P., Palomero-Gallagher, N., Zilles, K.
(2010) Broca’s region: novel organizational principles and multiple receptor mapping. PLoS Biol, 8(9).
Amunts, K., Schleicher, A., Burgel, U., Mohlberg, H., Uylings, H. B., Zilles, K.
(1999) Broca’s region revisited: cytoarchitecture and intersubject variability. J Comp Neurol, 412(2), 319–341.
Amunts, K., Schleicher, A., Ditterich, A., Zilles, K.
(2003) Broca’s region: cytoarchitectonic asymmetry and developmental changes. J Comp Neurol, 465(1), 72–89.
Bernard, F., Zemmoura, I., Ter Minassian, A., Lemée, J.-M., Menei, P.
(2019) Anatomical variability of the arcuate fasciculus: a systematical review. Surgical and Radiologic Anatomy, 1–12.
Berwick, R. C., Chomsky, N.
(2016) Why only us: Language and evolution: MIT press.
Broca, P.
(1865) Sur la siège de la faculté de langage articulé. Bulletin de la Societè de Anthropologie, 61, 337–398.
Cantalupo, C., Hopkins, W. D.
(2001) Asymmetric Broca’s area in great apes. Nature, 414(6863), 505.
Cappa, S. F.
(2015) Disorders of Language. In A. W. Toga (Ed.), Brain Mapping: An Encyclopedic Reference. Vol. 3. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1089–1093.
Catani, M., Jones, D. K., ffytche, D. H.
(2005) Perisylvian language networks of the human brain. Ann Neurol, 57(1), 8–16.
Chance, S. A., Casanova, M. F., Switala, A. E., Crow, T. J.
(2006) Minicolumnar structure in Heschl’s gyrus and planum temporale: Asymmetries in relation to sex and callosal fiber number. Neuroscience, 143(4), 1041–1050.
de Schotten, M. T., Dell’Acqua, F., Valabregue, R., Catani, M.
(2012) Monkey to human comparative anatomy of the frontal lobe association tracts. Cortex, 48(1), 82–96.
Dick, A. S., & Tremblay, P.
(2012) Beyond the arcuate fasciculus: consensus and controversy in the connectional anatomy of language. Brain, 135(12), 3529–3550.
Economo, C. von, Horn, L.
(1930) Über Windungsrelief, Maße und Rindenarchitektonik der Supratemporalfläche, ihre individuellen und ihre Seitenunterschiede. Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, 1301, 678–757.
Eichert, N., Verhagen, L., Folloni, D., Jbabdi, S., Khrapitchev, A. A., Sibson, N. R., Mars, R. B.
(2019) What is special about the human arcuate fasciculus? Lateralization, projections, and expansion. Cortex, 1181, 107–115.
Falzi, G., Perrone, P., Vignolo, L. A.
(1982) Right-left asymmetry in anterior speech region. Arch Neurol, 39(4), 239–240.
Frey, S., Campbell, J. S. W., Pike, G. B., Petrides, M.
(2008) Dissociating the human language pathways with high angular resolution diffusion fiber tractography. J. Neurosci. 281, 11435–11444.
Geschwind, N., Levitsky, W.
(1968) Human brain: left-right asymmetries in temporal speech region. Science, 161(3837), 186–187.
Gough, P. M., Connally, E. L., Howell, P., Ward, D., Chesters, J., & Watkins, K. E.
(2018) Planum temporale asymmetry in people who stutter. Journal of fluency disorders, 551, 94–105.
Hauser, M. D., Yang, C., Berwick, R. C., Tattersall, I., Ryan, M. J., Watumull, J., Lewontin, R. C.
(2014) The mystery of language evolution. Front Psychol, 51, 401.
Hecht, E. E., Gutman, D. A., Bradley, B. A., Preuss, T. M., Stout, D.
(2015) Virtual dissection and comparative connectivity of the superior longitudinal fasciculus in chimpanzees and humans. Neuroimage, 1081, 124–137.
Hopkins, W. D., Nir, T. M.
(2010) Planum temporale surface area and grey matter asymmetries in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): the effect of handedness and comparison with findings in humans. Behav Brain Res, 208(2), 436–443.
Keller, S. S., Crow, T., Foundas, A., Amunts, K., Roberts, N.
(2009) Broca’s area: nomenclature, anatomy, typology and asymmetry. Brain Lang, 109(1), 29–48.
Kelly, K., Uddin, L. Q., Shehzad, Z., Margulies, D. S., Castellanos, F. X., Milham, M. P., Petrides, M.
(2010) Broca’s region: linking human brain functional connectivity data and nonhuman primate tracing anatomy studies. Eur. J. Neurosci. 321, 383–398.
Kong, X.-Z., Mathias, S. R., Guadalupe, T., Glahn, D. C., Franke, B., Crivello, F., Francks, C.
(2018) Mapping cortical brain asymmetry in 17,141 healthy individuals worldwide via the ENIGMA Consortium. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(22), E5154–E5163.
Mantini, D., Corbetta, M., Romani, G. L., Orban, G. A., Vanduffel, W.
(2013) Evolutionarily novel functional networks in the human brain? Journal of Neuroscience, 33(8), 3259–3275.
Marie, D., Roth, M., Lacoste, R., Nazarian, B., Bertello, A., Anton, J.-L., Meguerditchian, A.
(2017) Left brain asymmetry of the planum temporale in a nonhominid primate: Redefining the origin of brain specialization for language. Cerebral Cortex, 28(5), 1808–1815.
Mars, R. B., Eichert, N., Jbabdi, S., Verhagen, L., & Rushworth, M. F.
(2018) Connectivity and the search for specializations in the language-capable brain. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 211, 19–26.
Martino, J., Hamer, P. C. D. W., Berger, M. S., Lawton, M. T., Arnold, C. M., de Lucas, E. M., Duffau, H.
(2013) Analysis of the subcomponents and cortical terminations of the perisylvian superior longitudinal fasciculus: a fiber dissection and DTI tractography study. Brain Structure and Function, 218(1), 105–121.
Neubert, F.-X., Mars, R. B., Thomas, A. G., Sallet, J., Rushworth, M. F.
(2014) Comparison of human ventral frontal cortex areas for cognitive control and language with areas in monkey frontal cortex. Neuron, 81(3), 700–713.
Ocklenburg, S., Friedrich, P., Fraenz, C., Schluter, C., Beste, C., Gunturkun, O., Genc, E.
(2018) Neurite architecture of the planum temporale predicts neurophysiological processing of auditory speech. Sci Adv, 4(7), eaar6830.
Parker, G. J., Luzzi, S., Alexander, D. C., Wheeler-Kingshott, C. A., Ciccarelli, O., Lambon Ralph, M. A.
(2005) Lateralization of ventral and dorsal auditory-language pathways in the human brain. Neuroimage, 24(3), 656–666.
Petrides, M., Pandya, D. N.
(2009) Distinct parietal and temporal pathways to the homologues of Broca’s area in the monkey. PLoS Biol. 7, e1000170.
Plessen, K. J., Hugdahl, K., Bansal, R., Hao, X., Peterson, B. S.
(2014) Sex, age, and cognitive correlates of asymmetries in thickness of the cortical mantle across the life span. Journal of Neuroscience, 34(18), 6294–6302.
Poldrack, R. A.
(2011) Inferring mental states from neuroimaging data: from reverse inference to large-scale decoding. Neuron, 72(5), 692–697.
Rilling, J. K., Glasser, M. F., Preuss, T. M., Ma, X., Zhao, T., Hu, X., Behrens, T. E.
(2008) The evolution of the arcuate fasciculus revealed with comparative DTI. Nature neuroscience, 11(4), 426.
Schenker, N. M., Buxhoeveden, D. P., Blackmon, W. L., Amunts, K., Zilles, K., Semendeferi, K.
(2008) A comparative quantitative analysis of cytoarchitecture and minicolumnar organization in Broca’s area in humans and great apes. J Comp Neurol, 510(1), 117–128.
Schenker, N. M., Hopkins, W. D., Spocter, M. A., Garrison, A. R., Stimpson, C. D., Erwin, J. M., Sherwood, C. C.
(2010) Broca’s area homologue in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): probabilistic mapping, asymmetry, and comparison to humans. Cereb Cortex, 20(3), 730–742.
Schmitz, J., Gunturkun, O., Ocklenburg, S.
(2019) Building an asymmetrical brain-the molecular perspective. Frontiers in psychology, 101, 982.
Shapleske, J., Rossell, S. L., Woodruff, P. W., David, A. S.
(1999) The planum temporale: a systematic, quantitative review of its structural, functional and clinical significance. Brain Res Brain Res Rev, 29(1), 26–49.
Taglialatela, J. P., Russell, J. L., Schaeffer, J. A., Hopkins, W. D.
(2008) Communicative signaling activates ‘Broca’s’ homolog in chimpanzees. Curr Biol, 18(5), 343–348.
Toga, A. W., Thompson, P. M.
(2003) Mapping brain asymmetry. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 41, 37.
Tzourio-Mazoyer, N., Mazoyer, B.
(2017) Variations of planum temporale asymmetries with Heschl’s Gyri duplications and association with cognitive abilities: MRI investigation of 428 healthy volunteers. Brain Struct Funct, 222(6), 2711–2726.
Uylings, H. B., Jacobsen, A. M., Zilles, K., Amunts, K.
(2006) Left-right asymmetry in volume and number of neurons in adult Broca’s area. Cortex, 42(4), 652–658.
Zilles, K., & Amunts, K.
(2018) Cytoarchitectonic and receptorarchitectonic organization in Broca’s region and surrounding cortex. Current opinion in behavioral sciences, 211, 93–105.