title: Neurobiological roots of language in primate audition: common computational properties.
abstract: Here, we present a new perspective on an old question: how does the neurobiology of human language relate to brain systems in nonhuman primates? We argue that higher-order language combinatorics, including sentence and discourse processing, can be situated in a unified, cross-species dorsal-ventral streams architecture for higher auditory processing, and that the functions of the dorsal and ventral streams in higher-order language processing can be grounded in their respective computational properties in primate audition. This view challenges an assumption, common in the cognitive sciences, that a nonhuman primate model forms an inherently inadequate basis for modeling higher-level language functions.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia; Department of Germanic Linguistics, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany. Electronic address: Ina.Bornkessel-Schlesewsky@unisa.edu.au.
authors.forename: Ina
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bornkessel-Schlesewsky
authors.affiliation: Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany.
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schlesewsky
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Steven L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Small
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition, Department of Neuroscience, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington DC, USA; Institute for Advanced Study, Technische Universität München, Garching, Germany.
authors.forename: Josef P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Rauschecker
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D011323:Primates / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: auditory objects; dual pathways; language; nonhuman primate model; sequence processing