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Similarities Found in Human, Chimp Brains
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Columbia, Mount Sinai Scientists Find Region That Controls Language
Identical in Both Species; Chimps May Use Gestures to Communicate


	Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Columbia University and 
the National Institutes of Health have found that a region of the brain thought to 
control language is larger in one hemisphere in both chimpanzees and humans, 
disproving a theory that the brain section was asymmetrical only in humans.
	The discovery, reported in the Jan. 9 issue of the journal Science, throws 
into question the role of the planum temporale, a part of the brain's temporal 
cortex that is located beneath the parietal cortex.  The planum temporale of the 
left hemisphere is normally larger than in the right hemisphere in humans, but 
94 percent of the chimpanzee brains studied demonstrated the same asymmetry.  
	Could the research result be interpreted to mean that chimpanzees have 
some kind of language?  "I don't think they have a language, but I do agree that 
they have some kind of communication system that might be more complex than 
we have heretofore thought," said Ralph Holloway, professor of anthropology at 
Columbia and co-author of the Science paper.  He believes chimps may converse 
using a sophisticated array of facial, body and hand gestures, perhaps augmented 
with grunting or other vocalizations.
	Patrick Gannon, assistant professor and director of the Paleoneurology
Research Laboratory in the Department of Otolaryngology at Mount Sinai, first 
suspected that chimpanzee brains might show the same asymmetry as those of
humans.  He sought the collaboration of Professor Holloway, who then assisted in 
measuring the planum temporale, which is not an obvious anatomical feature, on 
his collection of 18 chimpanzee brains.  The Columbia anthropologist conducts 
comparative neuroanatomical studies on the chimpanzee brains in order to better 
understand evolution of the human brain.
	The research finding contradicts a long-standing scientific theory that only 
humans displayed the left-side brain enlargement.  Nineteenth-century 
neurologist Carl Wernicke had noticed that patients with brain lesions of the 
posterior temporal lobe and parietal lobe - the same area studied by the Mount 
Sinai and Columbia researchers - could produce language but couldn't 
understand it.  That region of the temporal cortex, also known as Wernicke's 
area, was thought to control language comprehension, but only in humans.
	"After 100 years of people doing comparative brain studies, you assume that 
the dogma is true.  It came as quite a shock to discover that the chimpanzee 
brains did show the same asymmetry as humans," Dr. Gannon said.
	He first theorized that the received wisdom might not be true when he 
conducted magnetic resonance imaging studies of chimpanzee brains in an NIH 
study and noticed the discrepancy between the brain hemispheres.
	The authors of the paper, who also included Allen Braun of the National 
Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders at NIH, proposed 
several possible interpretations of the work, in addition to the possibility of chimp 
communication.  If both chimps and humans have an enlarged planum 
temporale, their common ancestor probably had the feature as well, though the 
brain region may not have acquired its language functions until humans split off 
from other primates 6 to 8 million years ago.  Finally, it may well be that the 
planum temporale is not involved in language in either chimps or humans.
	The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the 
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the 
National Institutes of Health and the Department of Otolaryngology and the 
Grabscheid Voice Center at Mount Sinai.

This document is available at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/pr/.  Working press may receive 
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