Changes to the blog

In an effort to bring you more and better biolinguistic content, your friendly blog team has joined forces with the Biolinguistics Initiative Barcelona. The "news roundup" section will now be hosted there. You can read the latest edition by following this link, and be sure to check out the rest of the blog as well.

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Think twice, speak once: bilinguals process both languages simultaneously
• SD: Ability to move to a beat linked to brain's response to speech: musical training may sharpen language processing
• BBC: Moving to the rhythm 'can help language skills'
• SD: Why humans are musical
• SD: Responsive interactions key to toddlers' ability to learn language
• NYU: The signing brain: what sign languages reveal about human language and the brain (video of Karen Emmorey lecture)
• SD: Aphasia and bilingualism: using one language to relearn another
• SD: Colonizing songbirds lost sense of syntax
• SD: Understanding how infants acquire new words across cultures

Recently in the headlines

• Quanta: Evolution as opportunist
• SD: New evidence that orangutans and gorillas can match images based on biological categories
• SD: Learning a new language alters brain development
• SD: Primate calls, like human speech, can help infants form categories
• SD: Language and tool-making skills evolved at the same time
• SD: Discovery helps to unlock brain's speech-learning mechanism
• SD: Look at what I'm saying: engineers show brain depends on vision to hear
• SD: Neuroscientists show that monkeys can decide to call out or keep silent
• NS: Why your brain may work like a dictionary
• SD: Brain scans may help diagnose dyslexia
• SD: Piano fingers: how players strike keys depends on how muscles are used for keystrokes that occur before and after (comparison to coarticulation in speech)

Today's installment is less narrowly linguistic and more broadly bio than in the past. Feedback on whether this is a positive or negative development is welcome.

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Brain picks out salient sounds from background noise by tracking frequency and time
• BBC: Dolphins give each other 'names' (video)
• BBC: Dolphins 'call each other by name'
• Language Log: Dolphins using personal names, again (includes several links)
• SD: Ability to learn new words based on efficient communication between brain areas that control movement and hearing
• SD: Bird brain? Birds and humans have similar brain wiring
• Quanta: The surprising origins of life's complexity
• SD: Inner speech speaks volumes about the brain
• SD: Bilingual children have a two-tracked mind
• SD: Neandertals shared speech and language with modern humans, study suggests
• NS: First man to hear people before they speak
• SD: Why do we gesticulate?
• NYT: From the mouths of babes and birds

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Gene deletion affects early language and brain white matter
• SD: Songbirds turn on and tune up
• NS: Mind-reading monkey brains look similar to ours

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Genetics of dyslexia and language impairment unraveled
• SD: How similar are the gestures of apes and human infants?
• SD: Songbirds may give insight to nature vs. nurture
• SD: Picking up a second language is predicted by ability to learn patterns
• Science News: Dog sniffs out grammar
• SD: How bilinguals switch between languages

Recently in the headlines

• NS: Early hominins couldn't have heard modern speech
• SD: Grammar errors? The brain detects them even when you are unaware
• SD: Brain anatomy of dyslexia is not the same in men and women, boys and girls
• SD: How we decode 'noisy' language in daily life
• SD: Evolving genes lead to evolving genes: selection in European populations of genes regulated by FOXP2

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Young children have grammar and chimpanzees don't
• BBC: Primate call gives clues to human speech origins
• SD: Shift of language function to right hemisphere impedes post-stroke aphasia recovery

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Language by mouth and by hand
• SD: Speaking a tonal language primes the brain for musical training
• SD: Mice show innate ability to vocalize: deaf or not, courting male mice make same sounds

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Language protein differs in males, females
• NS: Conductor of speech uncovered in the brain
• SD: Secrets of human speech uncovered
• SD: How human language could have evolved from birdsong
• Replicated Typo: The evolution of speech: lip-smacking monkeys (links to Ghazanfar et al. PNAS article and Fitch's news article on it in Nature)

Deadline extended: Methods in Biolinguistics Workshop

The deadline for abstracts for the Methods in Biolinguistics Workshop at the 2013 LSA Summer Institute has been extended to March 15. Please see the original announcement for details.

CFP: ESHE 3rd Annual Meeting

European Society for the Study of Human Evolution (ESHE) 3rd Annual Meeting
Vienna, Austria - September 20-21, 2013
http://www.eshe.eu/meetings.html

From the ESHE website:
We are pleased to announce the 3rd annual ESHE Meeting in Vienna, Austria. The meeting will be hosted by the local organizer Professor Gerhard Weber, from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Vienna. On Thursday 19 September, the eve of the opening of the meeting, a special Keynote presentation will be given by Professor Tecumseh Fitch, from the University of Vienna, on the evolution of speech, language and music. The meeting will be held on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 September in the spectacular Groβer Festsaal and Kleiner Festsaal at the University of Vienna. Each day will be composed of plenary podium sessions in the morning, specialized workshops in the afternoon and poster sessions in the early evening. An open bar will be organized during the first poster session on Friday and on Saturday evening a General Assembly of the members of the society will take place, followed by a closing party at a traditional Austrian ‘Heuriger’. On Sunday, 22 September an optional excursion will be offered to some of Austria’s most important archaeological sites, namely Willendorf and Krems Wachtberg, and will include a cruise along the beautiful Wachau section of the Danube river.

Abstracts are due on May 31, 2013.

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Roots of language in human and bird biology
• SD: Cultural evolution changes bird song
• SD: Learning and memory may play a central role in synesthesia 
• SD: Brain structure of infants predicts language skills at one year

Recently in the headlines

• BBC: Birdsong secrets revealed in 3D model
• SD: How do songbirds sing? In 3-D!
• SD: Language learning begins in utero, study finds
• SD: Birdsong study pecks theory that music is uniquely human
• SD: How songbirds learn to sing: mathematical model explains how birds correct mistakes to stay on key
• SD: Rhesus monkeys cannot hear the beat in music