Left Brain Asymmetry of the Planum Temporale in a Nonhominid Primate: Redefining the Origin of Brain Specialization for Language

Marie, Damien; Roth, Muriel; Lacoste, Romain; Nazarian, Bruno; Bertello, Alice; Anton, Jean-Luc; Hopkins, William D.; Margiotoudi, Konstantina; Love, Scott A.; Meguerditchian, Adrien

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Title		Left Brain Asymmetry of the Planum Temporale in a Nonhominid Primate: Redefining the Origin of Brain Specialization for Language
Authors		Marie, Damien Roth, Muriel Lacoste, Romain Nazarian, Bruno Bertello, Alice Anton, Jean-Luc Hopkins, William D. Margiotoudi, Konstantina Love, Scott A. Meguerditchian, Adrien show all authors [1 - 10]
Published in		Cerebral Cortex. 2017, vol. 1, no. 8
Abstract		The planum temporale (PT) is a critical region of the language functional network in the human brain showing a striking size asymmetry toward the left hemisphere. Historically considered as a structural landmark of the left-brain specialization for language, a similar anatomical bias has been described in great apes but never in monkeys—indicating that this brain landmark might be unique to Hominidae evolution. In the present in vivo magnetic resonance imaging study, we show clearly for the first time in a nonhominid primate species, an Old World monkey, a left size predominance of the PT among 96 olive baboons (Papio anubis), using manual delineation of this region in each individual hemisphere. This asymmetric distribution was quasi-identical to that found originally in humans. Such a finding questions the relationship between PT asymmetry and the emergence of language, indicating that the origin of this cerebral specialization could be much older than previously thought, dating back, not to the Hominidae, but rather to the Catarrhini evolution at the common ancestor of humans, great apes and Old World monkeys, 30–40 million years ago.
Keywords		Baboons — Brain evolution — Hemispheric specialization — MRI
Identifiers		DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhx096
Full text		Article (Published version) (282 Kb) - Free access Other version: https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/cercor/bhx096
Structures		Faculté de médecine / Section de médecine clinique / Département des neurosciences cliniques
Research groups		Brain and Language Lab (926) Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive
Project		ANR-12-PDOC-0014-01, LangPrimate Project, P.I. Adrien Meguerditchian
Citation (ISO format)		MARIE, Damien et al. Left Brain Asymmetry of the Planum Temporale in a Nonhominid Primate: Redefining the Origin of Brain Specialization for Language. In: Cerebral Cortex, 2017, vol. 1, n° 8. https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:93637