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)

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

Recently in the headlines

• Replicated Typo: The origin of language in gesture-speech unity (links to blog posts by David McNeil on How Language Began)
• BBC: Parrot mimics address individuals
• SD: Parrots imitate individuals when addressing them
• SD: Call that a ball? Dogs learn to associate words with objects differently than humans do
• SD: Evolution of human intellect: human-specific regulation of neuronal genes
• NS: Our true dawn: pinning down human origins

And don't forget to check out the newest issue of Biolinguistics (vol 6 no 3-4), published this week.

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Read my lips: it's easier when they're your own
• SD: New brain gene gives us edge over apes, study suggests
• New blog: Faculty of Language

Recently in the headlines

• NS: First analysis of beluga while mimicking human speech (with sound clip and link to another study about sound-object pairing in belugas)
• SD: How the brain forms categories
• Nat Geo: Singing mice learn new tunes
• SD: Language structure arises from balance of clear and effective communication, study finds

Recently in the headlines

• PLOS One: Of mice, birds, and men: the mouse ultrasonic song system has some features similar to humans and song-learning birds
• SD: Applying information theory to linguistics
• SD: Language learning makes the brain grow, Swedish study suggests
• SD: Music underlies language acquisition, theorists propose
• SD: How birds master courtship songs: zebra finches shed light on brain circuits and learning
• Discover: Same gene linked to bigger brains of dolphins and primates
• SD: Babies' ability to detect complex rules in language outshines that of adults, research suggests
• SD: Neandertal's right-handedness verified, hints at language capacity

Recently in the headlines

• BBC - Related birds evolve different songs and colours
• SD - Deaf brain processes touch differently
• BBC - Study says chimpanzees use 'human-like gestures'
• SD - Infants can use language to learn about people's intentions
• SD - How elephants produce their deep 'voices': same physical mechanism produces vocalizations in elephants and humans
• SD - Of mice and melodies: research on language gene seeks to uncover the origins of the singing mouse
• SD - Brain's code for pronouncing vowels uncovered
• SD - More sophisticated wiring, not just bigger brain, helped humans evolve beyond chimps
• Nat Geo - Gibbons and opera singers use the same voice tools
• SD - Primate of the opera: what soprano singing apes on helium reveal about the human voice
• BBC - Helium-huffing gibbons 'sing with soprano technique'

Recently in the headlines

• Science: News focus on evolution of language (coverage of EVOLANG)
• SD: Between ear and brain, an orderly orchestra of synapses
• BBC: Gorillas use 'baby talk' gestures (with video)
• Nat Geo: Gorillas seen using 'baby talk' gestures - a first (with video)
• SD: How brain performs 'motor chunking' tasks

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Monkey lip smacks provide new insights into the evolution of human speech
• SD: Extra gene drove instant leap in human brain evolution
• SD: Songbirds' learning hub in brain offers insight into motor control
• SD: Gestures fulfill a big role in language
• NS: Bilingual brain boost: two tongues, two minds

Recently in the headlines

• BBC: The rock hyrax surprises with its syntax skills
• BBC: Speech lab: unlocking the secrets of the human voice (with speech jammer video)
• NYT: The Living Word by Peter Ludlow
• SD: Bilingualism fine-tunes hearing, enhances attention
• NS: 'Cocktail party effect' identified in the brain
• NS: Baboons and 4-letter words point to the origins of reading
• SD: Tackling dyslexia before kids learn to read
• SD: Game changer for evolutionary theory?
• SD: Sparrows change their tune to be heard in noisy cities
• NS: Mapping the language minefield for kids with autism