Yannick Becker

📢 2 PhD positions (E13 TV-L, 75%) in our DFG-funded project on great ape communication & the evolution of common ground!

🧠 Backgrounds in biology, psychology or linguistics welcome.
🗓️ Deadline: Aug 13
🔗 bit.ly/4l8p7hy & bit.ly/46jcfAq

Please share!
@elmanubohn.bsky.social @meanwhileina.bsky.social

If you want to learn more, I'm presenting this study tomorrow Fri 16th of May ~10:30am at the Neuro-primatology symposium #neurofrance2025 @socneuro.bsky.social

Language connection discovered in chimpanzee brains Language connection discovered in chimpanzee brains

10/n
📖 Read the press release: www.cbs.mpg.de/2358103/2025...

With amazing co-authors and funders (here online): @alfredanwander.bsky.social @tozbu.bsky.social @taichimpproject.bsky.social @awi.de @maxplanck.de @mpicbs.bsky.social @natureportfolio.nature.com @fondationfyssen.bsky.social

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.
🧪🌿

Versatile use of chimpanzee call combinations promotes meaning expansion Chimpanzees uniquely use diverse combinatorial mechanisms to alter meaning in call combinations.

8/n
Bonus: Chimp communication already shows structure, combinations, and even some syntax-like patterns. See super recent example: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The long AF may support this, making it a bridge between gesture, vocalisation, and early language.

7/n
Bottom line?
The neural scaffolding for language likely existed in the last common ancestor of humans and chimps, ~7 million years ago.

6/n
Lateralisation matters too.
Most chimps (esp. zoo-housed) showed left-hemisphere dominance for AF-MTG, just like us.
Wild chimps had more variation—hinting at environmental influence on brain plasticity. 🌍🧠

5/n
Key finding:
🔹 In humans, AF-MTG is stronger than AF-STG
🔹 In chimps, it’s the opposite—AF-STG dominates
→ Suggests evolutionary strengthening of a pre-existing pathway, not a brand-new invention.

4/n
The AF-MTG connection in chimps is weaker than in humans but present in all tested brains.
And that changes everything.
Language wiring didn’t appear out of nowhere—it evolved gradually. 🧬

3/n
But in our new study, using ultra-high-res diffusion MRI (500μm), we found AF-MTG connections consistent in both wild and captive chimpanzees.

2/n
The arcuate fascicle (AF) is a key brain tract linking language areas in humans, especially Broca’s area with the middle temporal gyrus (MTG), vital for syntax and semantics.
Until now, AF-MTG connection was thought to be human-only. 🤯

Portrait of the chimpanzee “Wazak” (©James Mollison) & Nerve fibres in the chimpanzee brain (©MPI CBS) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59254-8

🚨 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. 👀🐒
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#Neuroscience #LanguageEvolution #Chimpanzees
1/n 🧵👇

It turns out that AF 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 and @erc.europa.eu, @ilcb.bsky.social, @neuromarseille.bsky.social, @fondationfyssen.bsky.social for the support!

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 was an incredible help!

Individual variation in the chimpanzee arcuate fasciculus predicts vocal and gestural communication Nature Communications - Here, authors reveal the anatomy of the chimpanzee arcuate fasciculus predicts use of intentional, communicative gestures and sounds. The chimpanzee arcuate is not...

Hey Arcuate freaks and geeks!

I first contacted Erin in 2019. 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

The core language network separated from other networks during primate evolution - Nature Reviews Neuroscience Nature Reviews Neuroscience - The core language network separated from other networks during primate evolution

The "real" link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Exciting! @evfedorenko.bsky.social and coll. @natureportfolio.bsky.social (NatRevNeurosci)'s piece functionally separated a core lang network from a percept.-motor network (+others);
and asked for an evo perspective!
Here we go: s.gwdg.de/WUPS8h
(together with A.D. Friederici)