Dr. Erich Jarvis: The Neuroscience of Speech, Language & Music
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman and am a professor of neurobiology optio logy at stanford school of medicine today. My guest is doctor eric jarvis. Doctor javis is a professor at the rockfalls university in new york city, and his laboratory studies the news biology of vocal learning, language, speech disorders, and remarkably, the relationship between language, music and movement, in particular, dance. His work spends from genomics.

So the very genes that make up our genome, and the genome of other species that speak and have language, such as songbirds and parts, all the way up to neural circuits, that is, the connections in the brain and body that govern our ability to learn and generate specific sounds and movements coordinated with those sounds, including hand movements. And all the way up to cognition, that is, our ability to think in specific ways based on what we are saying and the way that we comprehend what other people are saying, singing and doing. As you will soon see, I was immediately transfixed and absolutely enchanted by doctor jarvis's description of his work in the ways that the impacts all the various aspects of our lives.

For instance, I learned from doctor jarvis that as we read, we are generating very low levels of motor activity in our throat. That is, we are speaking the words that we are reading at a level below the perception of sound or our own perception of those words. But if one we're to put in an amplifier to measure the firing of those muscles in our vocal cords, we'd find that as we're reading information, we are actually speaking that information.

And as I learn, and you will soon learn, there's a direct link between those species in the world that have song and movement, which many of us would associate with dance, and our ability to learn and generate complex language. So for people with speech disorders like study, or four people who are interested in multiple language learning, bilingual trAiling will IT set up. And Frankly, for anyone who is interested in how we communicate through words written or spoken, i'm certain today's episode is going to be an especially interesting and important one for you.

Doctor job sa's work is so pioneering that he has been awarded truly countless awards. I'm not going to take our time to list off all of the various important awards that he he's received, but I should point out that in addition to being a decorated professor at the rock pillar university, he is also an investigated with the Howard huge medical institute that so called hh mi. And for those of you that don't know, hmi investigators are selected on an extremely competitive basis that they have to make up, that is, they have to recomputation every five years.

They actually receive a grade every five years that dictate tes whether or not they are no longer a harsh investigator or whether or not they can advance to five years of funding for their important research. And indeed, how are few investors are selected not just for the rigor of their work, but for their pioneering spirit and their ability to take on high risk, high benefit work, which is exactly the kind of work the doctor charvis is is providing for decades. Now, again, I think today's episode is one of the more unique and special episodes that we've had on the human and podcast.

I single LED IT out because IT really spends from the basic to the applied. And dr. drivers. A story is an especially unique one in terms of how he arrived at becoming a neurobiology.

So for those of you they are interested in personal journey and personal story, doctor jarvis is truly a special and important one. Before I begin, i'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at stanford. IT is, however, part of my desired effort to bring zero costing of summer information about science and science related tools to the general public.

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And now for my discussion with doctor eric jarvis. Eric, so great to have you here. Thank you. Yeah, very interested in learning from you about speech and language.

And even as I asked the question, I realized that a lot of people, including myself, probably don't fully appreciate the distinction between speech and language. Like speech. I think of is the motor patterns, the production of sound, uh, that has meaning, hopefully.

And language, of course, come various languages and varieties of of ways of communicating. But in terms of the study of speech and language and thinking about how the brain organize the speech and language, what are the similarities? What are the differences?

How should we think about speech and language? Yeah, glad. I'm glad to get that first question, which I want to set a provocative one. The reason why, uh, i've been struggling where IT is the difference with speech of language many years and realize why my struggling is because their behavioral terms was called psychologically psychology developed in in terms um that don't actually align exactly with brain function right and the question is their distinction between speech and language and when I look at the brain of work that other people have done, work we have done, also compared with animal models like those who can imitate sounds like parrots and sunburns, I start to see there really isn't such a sharp distinction.

So so to get up what I think is going on, let me tell you how some people think of IT now that there is a separate language module in the brain that has all the algorithms and computations that influences the speech patchway on how to produce sound and the auditory pathway on how to perceive interpreted uh, for speech or for, you know, sound that we call speech and IT. Turns out I don't think there is any good evidence for a separate language module. Instead, there is a speech production pathway that controlling our learning, controlling our john muscles, that has built within IT all the complex algorithms for spoken language.

And there's the auditory pathway that has built within IT, all the complex algorithms for understanding speech, not separate from a language module. And the speech production pathway is specialized to humans and parrots and song birds. Where's this? Auditory perception pathway is more ubiquity amongst animal kingdom.

This is why dogs can understand. Sit, C M. They say, come here, ball boy, get the ball. And so for dogs can understand several hundred human speech words, great adds. You can teach them for several thousand, but they can't say a word.

Fascinating because you've raised a number of animal species early on here. And because I have a basically an obsession with the animals, since the time I was very, very small, I have to ask, which animals have language? Which animals have motive communication that are sort of like language? You have heard whale songs. I don't know what they're saying, the very, but they could be insulting each other for all I know. And then very well, maybe dolphins, birds, I mean, what do we understand about moths of communication that are like language, but might not be what would classically be called language.

right? So, so most of communication that people would define as language more very in a very narrow definition they would say production of sounds of speech.

Um but what about the hands to gesturing with the hands? What about a bird who is doing arial displays in the air communicating information through body language? right? Well, um i'm going to go back to the brain so what I think is going on is for spoken language, we're using the speech pathway in all the complex algis there next to the brain regions at a controlling spoken language or the brain regions for gesturing with the hands and that hand parallel athlete has also conflicts algorithms that we can utilize.

And some species are more advanced in the circuits, whether it's sound or gesturing with hands, and somewhat or less advance. Now we humans and a few others are the most advance for the speech sounds or the or the spoken language, but a non human primary can produce gesturing in a more advanced m than they could produce sound. I'm not sure I got that across clearly, just to say that humans are the most advanced spoken language. But not necessarily as big a difference at gesture language compared to some of the species.

Very clear and very interesting and immediately prompted the question, have there been brain imaging or other sorts of studies evaluating neural activity in the context of cultures and languages, at least that I associate with a lot of hand movement like italian versus I don't know, maybe you could give us some examples of cultures where language is not sociate with as much of vert hand movement?

yes. So as you and I are talking here today and people who are listening but can see us, we're actually gesturing without hands as we talk uh without knowing IT or doing IT unconsciously and if we were talking on a telephone, I would have one hand here and i'd be gesturing with the other hand without even used seeing me right.

And so why is that? Some have argued and and I would agree with basically what we've seen is that there is an evolutionary relationship between the brain pathways that controlled speech production and gesturing, uh, and and the brain regions I mentioned, or directly a Jason to each other and why is I think that the brain pathways that control speech evolved added the brain pathways that control body movement right and um that uh when you talk about italian, french, english and so for um each one of those languages come with a learn set of gestures that you can communicate with. Now how is that related to other animals? While coco gorilla, who is raised with humans for thirty nine years, one more uh learn how to do gesture communication, learn how to sign language so to speak right but coco couldn't produce those sounds.

Coco could understand them as well by side, by seeing somebody sign or hearing somebody produce speech. But coco couldn't produce IT with her voice. And so what's going on there is that a number species, not all of them, a number of species have motor pathways in the brain where you can do learn gesturing rudimentary language if you want, and save with your limbs, even if it's not as advanced humans. But they don't have this extra brain pathways for the sound. So they can't gesture with their voice in the way that they gesture with their hands.

I see one thing I have wondered about for a very long time is whether or not primitive emotions and primitive sounds are the early substrate of language, and whether or not there is a bridge that we can draw between those in terms of just the basic aspiration systems associated with different extreme feelings. here. Here's the way i'm imagining this might work.

When I smell something delicious, I typically inhale more, and I might say, or something like that, or as if I smell something futured, I typically turn away. I wins, and I will excel. I can't like turn away trying to not in just those molecules or inhale those molecules. I could imagine that these are the basic dark and light contrast of the of the language system.

And as I say that, i'm saying that from the orientation of a vision scientist who thinks of all visual images, built up in a very basic way of a high article model of the ability see dark and light, so I could imagine this kind of primitive to more sophisticated permit of sound to language. Is this a crazy idea? Do we have any a, do we have any evidence this is the way IT works?

Oh no, it's not a crazy idea. And in fact, he hit upon one of the key distinctions in the field of research and I had started out in, which is vocal learning research.

So for vocal communication, uh, you have most bird species is vocalize, but most of them are producing a nate sounds that they're born with uh producing uh that is babies crying, for example, or dogs barking uh and only a few species have learned vocal communication, the ability to imitate sounds and that is what makes spoken language special. One people think of what special about language. It's to learn vocalizations.

It's what that is what's rare. And so this is distinction between the nightlife and learned um is more of a bigger economy when IT comes of validation than for other behaviors in the animal kingdom. And uh when you go in the brain, you see that there as well uh and so all the things you talked about, the breathing, the granting and so for a lot of that is handled by the brain stem circuits, you know right around the level of your neck and below, uh, like a reflex anything so or or even some emotional aspects of your behavior in the hypothalamic.

So for but for a learned behavior, learning how to speak, uh, learning how to play the piano, teaching a dog to learn how to do tricks is using the four brain circuits. And what has happened is that there's a lot of four brain circuits that are controlling learning how to move body parts in these species, but not for the vocular tions, but in humans and in parents in some other species. Somehow we acquired circuits where the forebrain has taken over the brain, then and now using their brain stem, not only to produce the nate behaviors or vocal behaviors, but the learned ones as well.

Do we have any sense of when modern or sophisticated language evolved in thinking back to the species that we evolved from? And even within homosapien s has there have been an evolution of language, has has been A A evolution of language a yeah yeah .

I I would say um in and to be able to answer that question IT does come with the caviar that I think we humans overrate ourselves when IT compared to other species and so that makes uh even scientists uh go a strain and trying to hypothesize when you actually don't find fossil evidence of language that easily um uh in out there uh in terms of what happened in the past um we amounts the prime mates with two humans belong to.

We are the only ones that have this advance vocal learning ability uh now when you IT was assumed that I was only homosapien s uh then you can go back in time now based on upon journey data, not only of us living humans, but of the fossils that have been found for homo sapiens, of the anthems of denis sovan, uh, individuals, and discover that our ancestors, our human ancestors, supposedly hybridize with these other harmony species. And IT was assumed that these other harmony species don't learn how to imitate sounds. I don't know any species today that's a vocal earner that can have children with a non vocal learning species.

I don't see IT doesn't mean that didn't exist. And we look at the genetic data from these ancestral harmonies that, uh, you know where we can look at genes that are involved in learn voice communication. They have the same sequence as we humans do for genes that function in speed circuits. So I think the anos had spoken language and not onna say as advance as what IT is in humans I don't know um but I think it's been there for least between five hundred thousand to a million years uh that uh our ancestors had disability and that we've been coming more and more advance with the culturally, possibly genetically um but I think of the valve sometimes the last five hundred thousand, two hundred million .

years incredible maybe we could talk a little bit more about the overlap between brain circuits that control language and speech and humans and other animals uh I was wind in the the neuroscience era wear bird song and the um the ability of birds to learn their tuder song was a was and still as a prominent field sub field of neuroscience and then of course neo imaging of humans of speaking and learning at sea and this notion of a critical period of time in which languages learned more easily than IT is later in life.

And the names of the different brain areas were quite different um if one opens the textbooks we hear verney's and broke for the humans and you look at the birds of, I remember hc robust yes right. Yeah it's but for most of our listening ers that those names won't mean a whole lot. But but in terms of homologies between areas, in terms of function, what do we know and how similar different are the brains? A brainer is controlling teaching language and say, a song bird and and a Young chap.

human child yeah so so going back to the one thousand nine hundred and fifties or and even little earlier and Peter mother and others who got involved in neurology logy the study of neurobiology behavior in a natural waiting right um you know they started to find that behavioral there are these species of birds, like song birds and parents. And now we also know hummy birds, just three of them of the forty something bird groups out there on the planet, orders that they can imitate sounds like we do.

And so that was the similarity of the words they had this kind of behavior that's more similar to us than chimpanzee's have with us, or than chickens have with them, right? They close the relatives, and then they discovered even more similarities, these critical periods that if you remove a child, you know, this unfortunate happens when a child is barrel, is not raised with human and goes to the puberty phase of growth, becomes hard for to learn a language as an adult. So there's this critical period where you learn best, and even later on, when you're in regular society, is hard to learn while the set birds undergo the same thing.

And then IT was discovered that if they become death, we humans become death, our speech starts to deteriorate without any kind of therapy. Uh, if a non human primate or um you know or would saying a chicken becomes death, their validation don't determinate very little at least uh well this happens in the vocal learning birds. So there were all these behavioral al parallels that IT came along with a package and then people looked into the brain for nano OTA, my former psc adviser, and began to discover the area actually talked about um the robust nuclear of the arcole alium and um and these brain pathways s were not found in the species who couldn't imitate.

So there is a parallel here and then uh jumping many years later, you know I started to drink down into these uh brain circuits to discover that these brain circuits have parallel functions with the brain circuits for humans, even though they buy a different name like brokers and original motor cortex. And most recently, we discovered not only the actual circuit in and connectivity are similar, but the underlying genes that are expressed in these brain regions in a specialized way different from the rest of rain, are also similar between humans and song birds and parts, so all the way down to the genes are now are finding the specific mutations or also similar, not always identical, but similar, uh, which indicates remarkable convergence for so called complex behavior in species separated by three hundred million years from the common ancestor. And not only that, we are discovering that mutations in these genes that cause speech deficits in humans I can fox p two. Uh, if you put the same mutations or similar type deficits in these vocal learning vergy similar deficits. So convergence of the behavior is associated with similar genetic disorders of the behavior.

incredible. I have to ask, do hummingbirds, singer, do they hum hummer .

birds hump with their wings and singing with their syrians .

in a coordinated way?

An acord ate way. There is some species of coming birds um that actually will um dog ashlea show this that will flap uh their wings and create a slapping sound with their wings that in unison with their song and you would not know IT but IT sounds like a particular siller in their songs uh even though it's their wings and their voice at .

the same time humming birds are clapping .

to their song clapping they're snapping their wings together uh in union with a song to to make IT like if i'm going but that but that know I think on the table except they make IT almost .

sound like their voice with their wings incredible .

and if .

I love hummer birds and I always feel like it's such A A special thing to get the moment to see when they move around so fast and they flit away so fast. Faster ballistic trajectories, that when you get to see one stationary for a moment, or even just hovering there is you feel like you're extracting so much from their low, low microcosm of life. But now I realized there.

they're playing music. exactly. What's amazing about homing birds, and I were going to say, vocal learning species in general, is that, for whatever reason, they seem to evolve multiple complex straits. You know, this idea that evolving language, spoken language in particular, comes along with a set of specializations credible.

When I was coming up in neuroscience, I learned that I think he was the work of Peter marler, that Young birds learn, songbirds learn their tuder song and learn IT quite, quite well, but that they could learn the song of to do.

In other words, they could learn a different, and for the listener's m doing air quotes here, a different language, a different bird song, different in their own species, but never as well as they could learn their own natural, genetically linked song, yes, gently, meaning that they would be like me being raised in a different culture, and that I would learn that the other language, but not as well as I would have learned english. This, this is the idea. yes.

Is that true? That is true. yes. And that's and that's what I learned going up as well and and talk to Peter Miller itself about before he passed yeah he used to call IT the innate previous position to learn alright so um what would be kind of the equivalent in the linguistic community of universal grammar? There is something genetically influencing our vocal communication on top of what we learn culturally. And so there is this baLances between the genetic control of speech or a song in these birds and learned a cultural control.

And so so yes, if you were to take um you know um I mean, in this case we actually tried this that rockerfeller later and take a zebra finch and raised IT with a canary IT would seeing a song that was sort like a hybrid gm between we call IT a clinch right uh advice version for the area because there's something different about their vocal musculature or the or the circuitry in the brain and with a zipper french, even with a closely related species, if you would take a zip inch, uh, Young animal. And in one cage next to IT plays its own species adult mail, right? And in the other cage plays a bengalese venge next to IT. IT would preferably learn the song from the its own species neighbor, but if you remove its neighbor, you would learn that bangle stage very well. And so there's IT has something to do with also the social bonding with your own species credible.

That raises a question that I based on something I also heard, but don't have any uh, scientific peer viewed publication to point to, which is this this idea of pigeon, not the bird, but the idea of when multiple cultures and languages converge in a given geographic area that the children in, of all the different native languages will come up with their own language.

I think if this was an island culture, maybe boy called pigeon, which is sort of a hybrid of the various languages that their parents speak at home and that they themselves speak, and that somehow, pigeon, again, not the bird, but a language called pigeon, for reasons I don't know, harbors certain basic elements of all language. Is that true? Is that not true? I, I.

I would. I haven't studied enough myself in in terms of pigeons specifically, but in terms of cultural evolution of language and hybridization between different culture. And so for even amongst birds with different dialects, you bring them together. Uh, you know, what is going on here is cultural evolution remarkably track genetic evolution. So you bring people from two separate populations together that happened in their separate populations for hundreds of generations.

So someone speaking chinese, someone speaking english, uh, and that child uh then learning from both of them, yes, that child's is gonna able to pick up and merge uh uh uh funds and words together in a way that an adult would did because why they're experiencing both languages at the same time during their critical period of years in a way that adults would not be able to experience. And so you get a hybrid. And the low is common to nominator is gonna what they share. And so the phone names that they retained in each of their uh uh languages is what's gonna. I imagine you use the most interesting.

So we've got brain circuits in songbirds and in humans that in many ways are similar, perhaps not in their exact wiring, but in their basic contour of wiring and genes that are expressed in both sets of neural circuits in very distinct species that are responsible for these, these phenomenon. We're calling speech and language.

What sorts of things are those genes controlling? What I could imagine, they were controlling the wiring of connections between brain areas. You essentially a map of of a circuit I feel like an engineer with on the circuit for speech and language nature design the r for speech and language. But presumable other things too, like the ability to connect motor patterns within the throat, of muscles within the throat, when the control of the tongue mean what what are these genes doing?

You're pretty good. Yeah you make some very good guesses there that uh, makes sense. Uh so so yes uh one of the things that differ in the speech pathways of us and the song pathways of birds is some of the connections are fundamentally different than the surrounding circuits like a um a direct critical connection uh from the areas that control vocalizations in the cortex of the modern irons that control the larrance and uh humans or the syrians and birds.

And so we actually made a prediction uh that since some of these connections differ, we're going to find genes that that controlled newer connectivity uh and that specialized that function that differ and that exactly what we found uh um genes that control what we called x on guidance and information and connections. And what was interesting IT was sorry of in the opposite direction that we expected that some of these genes, actually, in a number of that, that control neural connectivity, were turned off in the speed circuit, right? And IT didn't make sense to us, that person.

So we start to realize the function of these genes are to repelled connections from forming so repulsive molecules. And so when you turn them off, they allows certain connections to form that Normally would have not formed. So so by turning and the off, you got a gain of function for speech, right? Um uh other genes that surprise us, where genes involved in cousin and buffering neural protection like a part volume or a heat shock proteins.

So when your brain get tight, these proteins turned on and we couldn't fig out for a long time. Why is that the case? And then the idea pop to me one day, said, ah when I heard the learnings is the fastest firing muscles in the body, right in order to vibrate sound and and margate sound in the way we do, you have to control, you have to move those muscles, you know three to four to five times faster than just regular walking or running.

And so when you stick electrodes in in the brain area that control, learn vocalizations in these birds, and I think in humans as well, of those norms of firing at a higher rate to control these muscles. And so what is that going to do? You're gonna a lots of toxin, those news, unless you are regulate molecules that take out, uh, the extra load that is needed to control the alarms.

And then finally, the third set of genes that are specialized in these speeds circuit are involved in neuroplasticity uh neuroplasticity meaning allowing more the brain circuits to be more flexible. Ah so you can learn Better. And why is that? I think learning how to produce speech is a more complex learning ability than say, learning how to walk or or learning how to do tricks and jumps. And so if their dogs do.

yeah, it's interesting, as you say, that because I I realized that many aspects of speech are sort of reflective. I'm not thinking about each where i'm going to say they just sort of roll out of my mouth, hopefully with some more thought. We both know people that seem to be think less, fewer synapses sis's between their brain and their mouth and others, right? A lot of examples out there.

And some people are very delivered in their speech, but nonetheless that much of speech is has to be precise and some of IT less precise in terms of plasticity of speech and the ability to learn multiple languages. But even just one language. What's going on in the critical period, this so called critical period? Why is IT that? So my niece speaks spanish, SHE squat a mall and speak expand ish an english incredibly well.

She's fourteen years old. I've struggles spanish my whole life. My fathers billing woman, my mother is not. I've tried to learn spanish as as an adult. It's really chAllenging. I'm told that had I learned IT when I was eight, I would be Better off or I would be installed within me.

So the first question is, is IT easier to learn multiple languages without an accent, early life? And if so, why? And then the second question is, if one can already speak more than one language as a consequent of childhood learning, is IT easier to acquire a new languages later on?

So so the answer to both of these questions is yes and that um but I but I but to to explain this I need to let you know actually the entire brain a is undergoing a critical period development, not just the speech pathways. And so it's easier to learn how to play a piano, it's easier to learn how to ride a bike for the first time and so forth.

As a Young child and IT is, uh, later in life, what I mean easier in terms of when you start from you start from first principles of learning something. So the very first time, if you're going to learn chinese as a child versus the very first time you learn chinese is an adult or learning play piano as a child versus is an adult. But the speech pathways or let's say speech behavior, I think has a stronger critical period.

Uh change to IT the other circuits. Uh and why what's going on there in general? Uh, if you uh why do you need a critical period to make you more stable uh, to make you more stuff and so to big, uh the reason I believe is that the brain is not for brain can only hold so much information. And uh if you are undergoing rapid learning to learn to acquire a new knowledge, you also have to you know dumb s stop put put in memory or information in the trash like in a computer you only have so many giga basis of memory.

And so therefore um plus also for survival, you don't want to keep forgetting things and so so the brain is designed, I believe, to undergo this critical period and solidify the circuits with what you learn as a child and you use that for the rest of your life and we humans stay even more plastic and out of brain functions controlled by a gene called S R gap two. We have an extra copy of IT that leaves our speech circuit, other brain regions in a more immature state throughout life compared to other animals. So we're more immature.

We're still juvenile like compared to other animals. I knew IT, but we still go through the critical periods like they all do. And now the question you asked about if you learn more um languages as a child can is IT easier to learn as an adult.

And that's a common uh finding out there in literature there are some that argue against IT but for those that supported the idea there is um you you are born with a set of a nate sounds. You can produce the phones and you narrow that down. Not all languages use all of them and so you narrow down the one you use to shrink the phone them together and words that you learn and you maintain those phones as an adult. And here comes along another language that using those phone dms or in different combinations, you are not used to, and therefore is like starting from first principles. But if you already have them in multiple languages that you're using, then IT makes IT easier to use them in another .

third of forth language. I see incredible.

So so it's not like your brain has under has maintained greater plasticity is your your brain has maintained greater ability to produce different sounds that then allows you to learn another .

language faster. Got IT are the hand gestures associated with sounds or with meanings of words?

I think the hand gestures associated with both the sounds and the meaning, when I say, sounds like if you are really angry, right? Uh, and you are making a loud screaming ing noise, right? You may make hand gestures that are look like gonna beat the wall, right, because you're making loud sounds and loud gestures, right?

Um but if you want to explain something, I come over here, what I just do now to you. For those who can see me, I swing my hand towards you and swing IT here to me that has a meaning to IT to come here. So just like what the voice, the the hand gestures are producing both uh uh you know both both qualities of sounds.

And for people that speak multiple languages, especially those that learn those multiple languages early in development, do they switch their patterns of motor movements according to, let's say, going from italian to arabic c um or from arabic c to french in a way that matches the the precision of language that they're speaking? You know what?

You just ask me a question I don't know the answer to. I would imagine that would make sense because of uh of switching uh in terms of sometimes people might call these codes watching even different dialogues of the same language. Could you do that with your gestures? I imagine so. But I really don't know that's true or not.

I certainly don't know from my own experience because I only speak one language. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, athletic Greens. Athletic Greens, now called ag one, is a vitamin mineral probiotic c drink that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs.

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Again, that's athletic Greenstock comm. Slash humans to get the five travel packs in the year supply of vitamin d three k two to go a little bit into the abstract, but not too far. What about modes of speech and language that seem to have a depth of emotionality and meaning, but for which IT departs from structured language?

Here's what I mean, a poetry, I think, of musicians. Like there are some bob Dylan songs that, to me, I understand the individual words. I like to think there's an emotion associated with.

At least I experience some sort of emotion. And I have a guess about what he was experiencing. But if I would just read IT literally without the music and without him singing IT or somebody singing IT like him IT ouldn't hold any meaning. So in other words, words that seem to have meaning but not associated with language, but somehow tap into an emotionality .

that absolutely so. So we call this difference um semantic communication, communication with meaning and effective communication, communication that has more than emotional feeling content to IT but not with you know the semantics and the two can be mixed up like with singing words that had meaning but also have this effective emotional you just love the sound of the singer that you're hearing and uh initially um uh you know like pologies scientists in general thought that these were going to be controlled by different brain circuits uh and and IT is the case there are emotional brain centres in the hypothalamic in the single cortex and so forth that do give tone to the sounds but um I believe you know based upon imaging work and work we see in birds when when birds are communicating semantic information in their sounds, which is not too often but IT happens is uh effective communication saying because i'm trying to attract the mate, my porch song or defend my territory it's the same brain circuits is the same speech like or song circuits are being used in different ways.

A friend of mine who is also a therapist is said to me, you know, it's possible to say I love you with intense hatred and to say I hate you with intense love, right? And reminding me that it's possible to hear both of those statements in either way. So uh, I guess it's just limited to song or poetry and also um there's something about the intention and the emotional context in which something spoken that they can heavily shape the way that we interpret what we hear.

That's right. And I consider all of that actually meaning even though I defined that is if people commonly do semantic and effective communication effective communication to say I hate you but meant love right is um does have emotional meaning to IT you know and so you know once more like an object company meeting or abstract company meeting. There are several of the points here.

I think it's important for for the those listening out there to here is that when I say also respective and um semantic communication um being used by similar brain circuits IT also matters the side of the brain uh in birds and in humans um there's there's left right dominance uh for learned communication, learn sound communication uh so the left in us humans is more dominant for speech but the right has a more baLance for singing or processing musical sounds as oppose processing speeds. Both get used for both reasons and so when people say your right brain is your artistic brain and your left brain is your thinking brain, this is what they're referring to uh and uh so that's another distinction. The second, a thing that's useful to know is that all vocal learning species use their learn sounds for this emotional, effective kinds communication. But only a few of them, like humans and some parrots and dolphins, use IT for the semantic kind of communication, calling, speech. And and that has made a number of people to hypothesize that the evolution of spoken language of speech evolve first for singing, uh, for this more like emotional kind of made attraction, like the general O P S, the Ricky marking kind of songs and so for and then later on, IT became used for abstract communication like we're doing now.

interesting. Well it's a perfect segway for me to be able to ask you about your background and motor control not only of the hands but of the body so you have A A number of important distinctions to your name but one of them um is that you were a member of the alvin ally school .

school and so you're you're .

an accomplished or in quite able dancer right um tell us a little bit about your background in the the world of dance and as how IT informs your interest in neuroscience excuse me, and perhaps even how IT relates specifically to your work on speech and language. Yes.

well, it's it's interesting. And this kind of history even goes before my time. So in my family, my mother and father's side, they both went on a high school of music and art here in new york city uh and particularly in my mother's family, going back multiple generations, there were singers and I even did my family geneology and found out not only you, we have some relationships to some long known singer's distant relationships like lones mug. But going back to the plantations in north CarOlina a and south forth, my ancestors were singers in the church for the, you know, the towns and so for, and this somehow got passed on multiple generations.

To my family, and I thought I was going to go grab and be a famous singer, right? And my me, my brothers and sister formed the band when we were kids and and so for and but IT turned out that I didn't inherit this singing talents of some my other family members, even though you know was okay, you know but not like my brother, not like my mother and my arts and my cousin puter phy, who is now and the native american singer so um so uh what that then influence me to do other things. And I started, uh, you know, competing and dance counters, uh, you know, actually just around the time at night fever.

And I was as a teenager, and I started when winning dance contest. And I thought, oh, I can dance and I addition for the high school performing arts, and I got in here in new york city and got into a ballet dance and got in right. And and so if I learn belley, I can learn everything else.

That was that idea. If you learn something classical, you can teach you for everything else. Uh and I was yeah at alan ali dance school, jeffrey ballet dance school and at the end of my senior us.

Uh concert, uh, I was had this opportunity or addition for the albania dance company and I had an opportunity to go to college. And I also fell in love with another passion that my father had, which was science. And so I like science in high school, and I found an overlap also between the arts and sciences.

You both require creativity, hard work, discipline, know new discovery. Both weren't boring to me. And one decision I made at at that senior dance concert was you talking to the albania recruit and thinking about IT.

I have to make a decision. And I thought something my mother taught me because he was grown up in one thousand nine hundred and sixty cultural revolution. Do something that has, uh, positive impact on society.

And I thought that I can do that Better as a dancer than a scientist. So now jump. I get into college, undergraduate school.

I major in molecular biology and mathematics. I decided I want to be a biologist. Get into graduate school.

When is the study? The the brain that the rock pillar university? So I went from hunter college of rock fill university.

And so now I got to the brain, and I, and why did I choose the brain? Is because IT controlled dancing. But I did.

There isn't anybody studying dancing. I wanted study the brain, something that IT does that really interesting in complex. And I thought, languages, what IT does, you couldn't study that you couldn't study in on human prime mates. But these birds do this wonderful thing that for nano obama study at rococo. Er, and so that's what got me into the birds uh and uh and then jumping now fifteen years later, you know yeah that's right.

Even after I been to now having my own labs studying vocal learning in these birds as a model for language and humans IT turns out that uh uh you know any patel and uh you know others uh have discovered um that um only vocal learning species can learn how to dance. That's right. That's right. Yes.

I saw i've seen these just scrolling through the the files here. And in my mind I think about everyone, someone, while someone was, I love the parrots, everyone. Someone will send me one of these instagram or twitter videos of a parrot doing what looks to me like dance. Typically it's a cockatoos, right? That's even foot stamp to the town and family.

one called snowball out there. But there there many snowballs out there.

There are all all the dancing birds are named snowball. That's interesting tactic. So only animals with language yeah.

Vocal learning, in particular, the ability to imitate sounds. yes. Incredible, yes. And this now is bringing my life full circle, right? And I and and so when that was discovered in two thousand and nine at the same time in my lab at duke, we had discovered that vocal learning brain pathways in song birds as well as in humans and in parrots right like novel um are embedded within circuit control, learning how to move.

And that LED us to a theory called the brain pathway, or motoring theory of origin, where the brain pathways for a voc learning in speech evolved by a whole duplication of the surrounding motoring circuits, involving learning how to move. Now how does that explain dance right? Well, when when snowball the cockatoo are are dancing, they're using the brain regions around their speech like circuits to to do this dancing behavior.

And so what's going on there? What we, what we hypothesize and now like to test is that when this, when speech evolved in humans and the equivalent behavior, and parrots and song birds, IT required a very tight integration in the brain regions that can hear sound, with the brain regions that control your muscles from moving your learning and tongue and so forth, for producing sound in that high auditory motor integration, we argue, that contaminate the surrounding brain regions. And that contamination of the surrounding brain reasons now allows us, humans are particular in parades, to a coordinate our muscle movements of the rest of the body with sound in the same way we do for speech sounds.

Well.

so we're speaking with our bodies .

when we dance incredible and and I have to say that as poor as I am at speaking multiple languages, i'm even worse at dancing so but .

I guarantee you're Better than a monkey .

but not snow all .

maybe that snowball you on youtube, we have a video where there's some science is dancing with snowball.

and you'll see snowball doing Better than this. Always, neural plasticity may IT save me someday. You said something incredible that I, I, I completely believe, even though I have minimum to let, is a minimum dancing ability.

Okay, I can get by at a party or wedding without complete embarrassment, but I don't have any structure training, so the body clearly can communicate with movement. As a trained dancer, and knowing other train answers, I always think of dance and bodily movement and communications through bodily movement as a form of a wordlessly like a state of wordlessly. In fact, the few times when I think that maybe i'm actually dancing modestly well for the context that I mean, or I see other people dancing, they seem to just be very much in the movement.

It's almost like a state of non language, non spoken language and and yet what you're telling me is that there is A A direct bridge at some level between the the movement of the body language. So is there a language of the body that is distinct from the language of speech? And if so, if not, how do those map on to one another? Was that the diagram look like.

yeah, yeah? So let me define first stance in this context of vocal learning species. This is the kind of dancing that we are specialized in doing.

And other vocal ing species specialized in doing is synchronizing body movements of muscles to the rym c beats of music. And for some reason we d like doing IT. We'd like synchronising to sound, uh, and doing IT together as a group of people.

And that kind of communication amongst ourselves is more like the effective kind of communication I mentioned earlier, unlike the semantic kind. So we humans are using our voices more for the semantic abstract communication, but we're using learn dance for the effective emotional bonding kind of communication. IT doesn't mean we can communicate semantic information.

We endings and we do IT um but is not as popular you know like a ballet that you know in the nutcracker IT is popular you know where they are communicating you know the van guy comes out, which I was the raban guy in the belly not cracked at yeah for the west festive ley company when I was a teenager uh you know where we're trying to communicate meeting in our ballet dance and you can go on with a whole story and so and but people don't interpret that is clearly as speech. You know they are seeing the ballet with semantic communication with a lot of emotional content whether you go out to a club, you know yeah you're you're not coming communicating IT. Okay, how you're feeling today, tell me about your day. And so for you're trying to synthesize with other people in an effective way. And I think that's because the the dance brain circuit inherit the more ancient part of the speed circuit, which was for singing.

I always had the feeling that with certain forms of music, in particular Opera, but any kind of um music where there are some long notes um song that at some level there was A A literal residence created between the singer and the listener that um or I think like the deep voice of A A joni cash or where at some level you can almost feel the voice in your own body and in theory that could be the the vibration of the the the firing of the french nerve controlling the diagram. M for all I know, is there any evidence that there's a coordination between performer and audience at the at the level of mind and body?

Um i'm going to say possibly yes uh and the reason why this means I just came back from a conference on the neurobiology dance uh good science.

so boring.

One of my colleagues to comes to fitch and jail and fitch, they organized a particularly section on on this conference in the genia and this is the first time I was in the room with so many neuroscientist studying the neurobiology ance.

It's a new field now in the last five years and um there was one of lab where they were putting eg electrodes on uh dancers on two different dancers partners with each other as well as uh the audience seeing the dance and and some you know argued, okay, if you are listening to the music as well, how you respond if you you're asking a question about music and i'm giving you an answer about dance and what they found is that you know uh the dancers when they resonate IT with each other during the dance or the audience listening to the dancers and the music, there are some residents going on there that theyve scores hire residents. The brain activity with these wireless eg signals or showing something different. And so that's why I say possible at IT IT needs IT needs more rigorous study uh and you know this is some stuff they publish but it's not prime time yet but they're trying to figure this out.

I love IT so at least um if I can dance well, maybe I can hear and feel what IT is today in a certain way.

That's right. And and and this will be some people will think that they even songs that they hear and they can almost sing to the themselves in their own head and they know what they wanted to sound like. And you know when that really sounds good, what IT sounds like, but they can't get their voice to do IT.

I'm raising for those listening. I'm raising my hand. No, no musical ability. Others in my household have tremendous musical ability with instruments and with voice. but.

Not me, yes. Well and so this is one of my one of my um selfish goals of trying to find the genetics of wise. Can some people think really well and some not there, some genetic previous visits an to that. And then can I modify my own muscles of brain circuits .

to sing Better still after? I think this is what happens when siblings are very in proficiency, is that that that competitive. This, among brothers and sisters, never goes away.

I've been trying to agree as good as my brother mark and Victor for the right that y'll hope my entire life.

Watch out. Marking factor, he's coming for you with neuroscience. It's to back in earlier you said that you discover that you could dance that that caught my ear um IT sounds like you didn't actually have to have not suggested you didn't work hard at IT at the moment where you discovered IT IT just sort of was a skill that you had that up until that point, you didn't target a life in in the world of dance. But the fact that you could not discovered that you could dance really well, then went to this incredible school of dance and and did well um tells me that perhaps there is a an ability that was built up in childhood and or that perhaps we do all have different genetic leaning ings for for different motor functions.

Well, for me there could be both explanations could be possible for the first um yeah I grew up in a family listening to mottle songs, you know dancing you know at uh parties and soft family parties know an african an family basically and um uh so so I grew up dancing uh from a Young child but this this this discovery, you know maybe dancing even more so uh uh in terms of a of a talent IT. Could the genetic component, if IT really exists? I don't know. You know, with my twenty three and me results, you know IT says I have uh the genetic uh substitutions that associated with um you know high intensity athletes and fast twist mules and who knows maybe that could have something to do with me being able to synching ze uh my body uh to rym c sounds um maybe maybe Better than some others um IT turns out that my genetics also show that I have uh genetic substitute that doesn't that make IT hard for me to sing on pitch and so that that's correctly with my you know even though I can sing on his pitch vesty by here of piano um or you know kind of playing IT but know maybe that's why my siblings you know who didn't have that genetic pretty position in his twenty three year results, you know I can go along with the genetic a component as well.

I'm imagining family gatherings with twenty three and me data, an intense arguments about IT and eight and learn ability. Yes, fun. Love to be attending IT. I'm not inviting myself here. Thanks, giving them right way.

Suppose I you welcome to thank you.

I'll bring my twenty three and me data. I'd love to chat a moment about facial expression because that's a form of motor pattern. Det, you know I think for most people out there um just think about smiling and frowning but there are of course you know thousands if not millions of micro expressions and things of that sort many which are subconscious um and we we are all familiar with the fact that when what somebody says doesn't match some specific feature of the facial expression that I can um call, you know that miss match can queue our attention, especially among people that know each other very well. Yeah like you somebody will say you said that but you you write I twitch to the a little bit in a way that tells me that you didn't really mean that these these kinds of things or when uh in the opposite example, when the motionless and the content of our speech is matched to a facial expression, there's something that's just so, uh, wonderful about that because IT seems like everything is aligned. Yes, so how does the motor circuit tree that controlled expression map on to the the brain circuits that control language, speech and even bodily in hand move?

Yes, you you, you ask a great question because we both knows some colleagues like men make five all that a rocky university who facial expression and the neurology gy behind IT. And now we both share some students that were commentating and talk about the same question that you brought up. And what i'm learning a lot is that non human prime mates have a lot of diversity in their facial expression, like we humans do.

And what we know about the neurobiology of brain regions controlling those muscles of the face is that these non human primates and some other species that don't learn how to imitate vocalizations, they have strong connections from the cortical regions to the modern neurons that control of facial expressions, but accent connections, or we connections to the modern and that control of voice. So I think our diverse facial expression, even though it's more diverse in these non impose that was already preexisting diversity of communication, whether it's intentional or unconscious, through facial expression in our ancestors. And on top of that, we humans now add the voice, uh, along with those facial expressions .

I see the and in terms of language learning, when we're kids, I mean, children unfortunately are not told to fake their expressions or to smile when they say i'm happy. So at some point everybody learns, for Better, for worse, how to untangle these different components of hand movement, body posture, speech and facial expression but in in their best form, I would say um assuming that the best form is always, I guess there are instance is where you for safety reasons, one might need to fail some of these some of these aspects of language.

But in most cases, when those are aligned, it's things like that could reflect that all the different circuit ries are Operating in parallel, but that the the ability to missile this is also A A powerful aspect to our maturation. I I couldn't think of theater, for instance, where deliberate disentangling of of these areas is important. But also we know when an actor, when IT feels real, you and when IT looks like went bad, acting is often times when the facial expression or body passer just doesn't quite match what hearing. And so are these skills that that people that learn and acquire according to adaptability and profession? Or do you think that all children and all adults eventually learn how a couple and a couple of these circuits a little bit?

Yeah, I I think it's it's the similar argument I mentioned earlier about the n and learn for the validation. And by the way, when I say we humans have facial expression associated with our vocalizations in a different way than prime mates, not human prime mates is the learn vocalizations i'm talking about.

So there is a common due out there that facial expressions and nonhuman species like non human prime mates, or you can have them in birds too, are um innate alright. And so there there reflects control. I don't believe that.

I think there are some learning compound into IT, and I think we have more learning compound into IT as well. But we also have an A, A component. And so if you try to put your hands behind your back and and hold your face, or even just not, and try to speak and try to communicate, it's actually harder to do.

You have to force yourself or put IT by your side. This comes naturally, facial expressions comes naturally because there is an nate component and yes, you have to learn how to associate the two communicate something angry with your hands up with your face but um you know politely with your voice. It's very hard to distance to separate at this two because there is that innate component that brings them together. So it's like an email to you, you're emAiling and someone says something by emails so one can interpret that angrily or or gently um and IT becomes ambiguous. The facial expressions get rid of their ambiguity.

So glad you wrote that out because my next question was and is about written language. Are the first question I ask is, when you write either type or write things out by hand, do you hear the content of what you want to write in your head? You just you personally?

Yes, I do. Yeah, I, I, I and I know that I do because I was trying to figure out a debate about this issue and trying to resolve debate with my own self experimenting on me. I ask that .

because a quite well known colleague of bars, carl, die at stanford who's been on this podcast and you know OPPO fame and .

psychic fame .

yeah he he told me that um his practice for writing and for thinking involves of a quite painful um process of forcing himself to sit completely still and think in complete sentences to force thinking in complete sentences. And when he told me that I decided to try this exercise and it's quite difficult first, all is difficult for the that you mention which is that with many thoughts I want to look around and I start to just speculate with my hands so here IT is, again the connection between language and hand movement, even if one isn't speaking. And the other part is that that's chAllenging, is I realized that while we write in complete sentences most of the time, i'll talk about how that's changing.

Now texting at sea that we don't often think in complete sentences, and specifically in simple clarity sentences, that a lot of our thoughts would be if if they were writing out onto a page, would look pretty much like passive language, that a good copy editor or a good editor would say, oh, like something to cross this out, make this simple and declaration. So what i'm getting at here is, what is the process of going from a thought to language to written word? And I also want to touch on handwritten versus typed, but thought language to written word.

What's going on there? What do we know about the neural circuit? And I was going to ask why it's so hard, but now I want to ask, why is this even possible? That seems like a very chAllenging neural computational problem.

Yeah yeah. And and from coming from the linguistic world and even just a regular news biotic world, going back to something I said before about a separate language module in the brain, you know, there was a thought or hypotheses that language module has all these complex algorithms to them.

And there's signaling to the speed circuit, how to produce the sounds, the hand circuit how to write them or gesture uh the visual pathway on how to interpret them from reading ah and the auditory passed away for listening. I don't think that's the case, right? Uh and you know that is thinking where where there's is international speech going on? What I think is going on is to explain what you're asking is about that.

I'm going to take up on the prospect of reading something. You read something on the paper. The signal from the paper goes through your eyes IT goes to the back, your brain, to your visual cortical regions eventually, uh, and then you now got to interpret that signal in your visual pathway of what you're reading.

How are you gna do that? Turn speech. That visual signal then goes to your speech pathway in the motor core, tex in front tier and broke as area. And you silently speak what you read in your brain without moving your muscles.

And sometimes, actually, if you put a lecture of E E G uh em g electrodes on your Angel muscles, even embracing and do this, you'll see activity there while reading or or or trying to speak silently, even though no sounds coming out. And so your speech pathway is now speaking what you're reading now to finish IT off, that signal is sent to your auditory pathway so you can hear what you're speaking in your own head. That's incredible.

And this is why it's complicated because you're using like three different pathways, the visual, the speaking, motor wine in the auditory to read. Oh, and then you got a right right. Okay, here comes the fourth one. Now the hand areas nexia speech pathway is got to take that auditory signal or even the adjacent motor signals for speaking and translated into a visual single law paper so so you're using at least four brain circuits um which includes the speech production in the speeches perception .

pathways to write incredible and finally explains me why when I said I was weaned teaching undergraduates graduate to medical students and I ve observed that when i'm teaching, I have to stop speaking if i'm going to write something on the board, I did have to stop all speaking completely, right? Turns out this is an advantage to catch because they allows me to catch my voice and allows me to slow down a bit, breathe and and have some oxygen and so on because I can to speak quickly if i'm not writing something out. So there's a break in the circuit tree for me, or at least they are distinct enough that I have to stop and then write something.

Yes, that that does Emily competing brain circuits for your conscious attention?

We have colleagues of colombia made who are known at least an hour circles for di voice, dictating their papers, not writing them out t but just speaking into a voice record. I've written papers that way. IT doesn't feel quite as natural for me as writing things out, but not because I can go quickly from thought to language to typing.

I type reasonably fast. I can touch type. Now, I don't think I ever taught.

I think I taught myself. I never took a touch type yeah course. I just sort of happened. Now, I my modern system seems to know where the keys are with enough enough accuracy that IT works. The this is remarkable to me that any of us can do this.

But when IT comes to writing, what i've found is that if my rate of thought and my rate of writing are a line nicely, things go well. And however, if i'm thinking much faster than I can write, that's a problem. And certainly, if i'm thinking more slowly than I want to write, that's also problem. And the solution for me has been to write with a pen. I'm in love with these, and I have no relationship to the company, at least not now. Although if they want to if they want to work with us, I love these pilot v five, v seven because not necessarily because of the ink or the the field, although I like that as well, but because of the rate that allows me to write, they write very well slowly, and they write very well quickly. And so i've have this theory supported .

only .

by my own aneth data, no peer reviewed study that writing by hand is fundamentally different than typing out information. Is there any evidence that this motor pathway for writing is Better or somehow different than the motor pathway for for typing?

Yeah that that's interesting um and I don't know of any studies um I have my own persons experience as well but try to put this into the context if I had to no design and experiment to test the hypotheses here you know to explain your experience in mind is that writing by hand, I I would argue a requires a different set of less skills with the fingers then typing. So you have you have to ordinate your fingers more in opposite directions and so for with typing uh but also writing by hand requires more ARM movement uh and so therefore I would argue that the um the the difficulty there could be in the types of muscles uh and they find motor controls you need of those muscles along with speaking in your brain at same time so basically .

i'm core some of brute and so he makes sense that I would have a promote primitive writing .

device would work right yes but me let me add to this in terms of the um I my own personal experience right what I find is I can write I can write something factor by hand um for short here to time compared to typing. And that is because I think I I run out of the energy in my ARM movements faster than I run out of muscle energy in my finger movements. Uh, and I think IT takes a longer time for us to write words without fingers uh because in terms of the speech, so I think you're writing, whether is by hand or typing and your speech, they only will alive very well if you can type as fast as you can speak or write as fast as you can speak in your head.

I love IT. So what you've done, if I understand recent, is created a bridge between thought and writing. And that bridge is speech.

That bridge is speech. That's right. That's right. When you're writing something out, you're speaking IT to yourself. And if you're speaking faster than you can type, you got a problem.

I do a number of podcast episodes that are not with gas but solo episodes and as listening to these are very long episodes, often two or more hours and um we joke around the poca studio that I will get locked into a mode of speech where some of IT is more elly's ative and um and a total and then and then i'll punch out um simple declarative sentences. I find IT very hard to switch from one module to the next.

The thing that I have done in order to make that transition more fluid and prep for those podcast episodes is actually to read the lyrics of songs and to seeing them in my head as a way of warming up my vocal cords. But luckily for those around me, when I do that, i'm not actually singing aloud. And so this, what you're telling me, supports this idea that even when we are imagining singing or writing in our mind, we are exercising our vocal you in little .

low potentials of electrical currents reaching your muscles there, which also means you're exercising your speech brain circuits too without actually know going with the flow bone activity in the muscles. Credible yes. And this this idea of singing helps you as well uh um uh even with parkinson's patients and so I want to say something, singer listening to music helps and move Better. And the idea there is that the brain circuits for singing, or let's say the function of the brain circuits for speech being used for singing verses, the more ancestral train. And that's why it's easier to do things with singing sometimes .

that is what speaking I love IT starter is a particularly interesting case and and one that everyone in a while I i'll get questions about this from our audience. Study is is complicated in a number of ways, but culturally, in my understanding from these emails that I received, that starter can often cause people to hide and speak less because IT can be embarrassing. And we are often not patient with with study.

We also have the assumption that if somebody starter's that they're thinking is slow, but IT turns out there are many examples, history ally of people who could not speak well, but who were brilliant thinkers. I don't know how well they could write, but they found other modes of communication. I realized that you're not A A speech pathologist and or but h, what is the current neuber logical understanding of studying and or what's being developed in terms of treatments for stutter?

So we actually uh, accidentally came across stuttering and song birds, and we've pople several papers on this to try to figure the neurobiological basis. The first study we had was a brain area, a called the basel gang, the strain and part of the basis of england involved in ordinating movements, learning how to make movements, when I was damaged in these, in this, in the speech like pathway in these birds of we found, is that they started to stutter as the brain region recovered. And unlike humans, they actually recovered after three or four months. And why is that the case because bird brains undergoes new neurogenesis in a way that human or mamo brains don't uh and IT was the new neurons that we're coming in into the circuit um but not quite you know with the right proper activity uh was resulting in this stuttering in these birds uh and after was repair not exactly the old song came back as after repair but still if recovered a lot Better and it's now known they call this neurogenetic a studdard ing in humans would damage to the brazil anglia or some type of disruption to the brazil. Gangly at a Young age also causes stuttering in humans and even those who are born with stuttering uh um is is often the basal ganglia uh that disrupted in some of the brain circuit and we think the speech part of the base of anglia .

kin adults who maintained a studdy from childhood repair that studying they .

can prepared with a therapy with learning how to speak slower or learning how to tap out rhythm doing that and yeah, i'm not a speech pathologist, but I started reading this literature uh and talking to others that you know um calling who actually studying stuttering so yes there there there are ways to overcome the sutter's through um through uh you know behavioral therapy uh and I think all of the tools out there have something to do with sensory motor integration. A controlling with you hear with what you output in a of thoughtful, all controlled way helps to reduce the sutterby.

There are couple examples from real life that I want to touch on, and one is somewhat feasible but but now I realize is a serious neurobiological issue, serious meaning I think interesting which is that everyone's in a while I will have a conversation with somebody who says the last word of the sentence along with me and IT seems annoying in some instances um but i'm guessing this is just a breakthrough of the motor pattern that they're hearing what i'm saying very well.

So i'm an interpret this is kindness and think they're hearing what i'm saying. They're literally hearing in their mind and they're getting that low level electrical activity to their throat and they're just joining me in the in the enunciation of what i'm saying， probably without realizing IT. Can we assume that, that might be the case?

Well, I I I wouldn't be surprised. So the mother theory of speech perception where this idea of resume came, what you hear is going through years being circuit and then also activating those muscles slightly uh so yes um so one might argue, okay, is that speech circuit now interpreting what that person is speaking now you listening to me and it's going to finish IT off because it's already going through their praying and they can predict that that would be one one theory.

I don't the verdict out there is no, but that's one. The other is, uh cyran ized turn taking in in the the conversation where you're acknowledged that we understand each other uh, by finishing of what I say, uh, IT was like a social bonding kind of thing. The other could be, I want the person that shut out so I can speak as well and take that turn.

And and each pair of people have a rhythm to their conversation. And if you have somebody who's overtalk of versus undertaking of a vice verse, that rhythm can be lost. And then finishing ideas and going back. And for, I think, having something to do with turn taking as well makes a lot of sense.

I have a colleague, stanford, who said as um that interruption is a sign of interest i'm not sure that everyone agrees I think entirely contextual but there is this form of of a verbal nod I was or things of that sort and there are many of these and i'm often told by my audience that I don't interrupt my guests and things that sort often times i'll just get caught in the natural flow of the conversation.

But well, I I I think we've have pretty good turn .

taking here. I hope I feel glad you actually, in the context of a discussion about language, this seems important. Texting is a very, very interesting evolution of language.

Because what you've told us is that we have a thought is translated into language that might not be complete sentences, but testing. I have to imagine, this is the first time in human evolution where we've written with our thugs. So I want, you know, seems more primitive to me than typing with fingers around the lands.

But hey, who might judge the evolution of our species in one direction or the other? But the short hand dramatically, often dramatically efficient, in complete sentence form of texting is an incredible thing to see. Early in relationships, romantic relationships, people often evaluate the others text in their ability to use proper grammar and spelling at sea.

This often quickly degrades and there's an acceptance that we're just trying to communicate through short hand, almost military likes short him, but with internally consistent between people. But there is no general consensus of what things mean. But you know w tf and like in O M G and all sorts of things.

I wonder sometimes whether or not we are getting less proficient at speech because we are not required to write and think in complete sentences. I'm not being judging mental here. I see this in my colleagues. I see this in myself. This is not A A judgment of the Younger generation.

I also know that slang has existed for decades, if not hundreds of years, but I also know that I do not speak the same way that I did when I was a teenager, because i've suppressed a lot of that slack, not because it's inappropriate or offensive, although some of IT was Frankly um but because it's out of context. So what do things happening? The language are we getting Better at speaking, worse at speaking? And what do you think the role of things like texting and tweet and short hand communication, hash tagging? What's that doing the way that our brains work?

Yeah I I think that a one in terms of, uh you know uh measuring your level of sophistication, intelligence and you say O M G, right I think that also could be a cultural thing that uh you belonged the next generation if you you know, or you're being called if you're an older person, you know using OMG and other things that the the you know Younger generation would use.

But um really think about IT, clearly a taxing actually has allowed for more rapid communication among the people. I I I think without the invention of the phone before then, or you know, uh, taxing back in for you had to wait days for a letter to show up you, you couldn't call somebody in the phone and talk as well. So this rapid communication, or in terms of the rapid communication of writing in this case, um so I think actually it's it's more like a use IT or lose IT kind of a uh thing with the brain.

The more you use a particular brain region or circuit, the more enhance its like a muscle uh the more you exercise that, the more healthier IT is the bigger IT becomes and the more space IT takes, the more you you lose something else. So I think taxing I my is not decreasing uh the the the speech powers of the intellectual powers of speech. It's converting IT and using IT a lot in a different way uh in a way that may not be as rich in in regular writing because uh you you can only communicate so much nuance in short turn writing.

But um whatever that is, whatever is being done, you ve got people texting hours and hours and hours on the phone. So whatever your thun circuit is gna get pretty big. actually.

I I do wonder where the you know many people have lost their jobs based on tweet. Um the short latency between thought and action and distribution of one thoughts is is incredible. yes. And i'm not just talking about people who have who apparently would have poor prefrontal top down control as as geek speak, by the way, for the people that lack impulse control, but high level academics, i'm gonna point fingers in anyone but examples of in where you see these treats you, what were they thinking? yeah.

So presume there's an optimal a strategy between the the thought speech, the motor pathway, which when the motor pathway engages communication with hundreds of thousands of people in retweet, in particular, the cotton pace function and the screen shot function are often the reason why speech propagates. yes. So to me it's it's a little ery that um the just that the neural circuitry can do this and that we are catching up A A little bit more slowly to the technology. And you've got these casualties of of that mismatch.

I think I think that's a good um agent to use the casualties you know what's going on because yes, IT is the case. We're taxing what you're really losing. Their is not less so the ability to write, but more the ability to interpret what is being written and you can over underwater pet something uh that somebody means um on the foot side of that you know when if somebody's writing something very quick, uh they could be writing instinctive ally, more instinctive ally.

They're true meaning and they don't have time to modify and color code what they're trying to say, and that's what they really feel as opposed to saying a more nuances way. So I think both sides of the casualty, our our present uh and that's a downturn you know uh unintended uh, negative consequence of short commit term. I mean, sure word communication .

yeah I agree that um this hall could be netty people that um Normally would only say these things out loud once inside the door of their own home or not at all right. It's an interesting time that were in speech and language or patterns part of the .

human evolution for a language. I, I, I think this is all part of our evolution.

That's right. So for those of you thinking terrible thoughts, please put them in the world and be a casualty. And for those of you that are not, please be very careful with how proficient your thought, the language to motor action. Yes, so maybe the technology company, you should install some buffers, some A I based buffers.

right? That's taking some E G signals from your brain while your taxes to say, okay, this this is, this is not a great thoughts.

Slow down, right? This doesn't reflect your best state. That brings me to the was going to be the next question anyway, which is we are quickly moving toward time where there will be an even faster transition from thought to speech to motor output and maybe won't require a motor output.

What i'm referring to hear some of the incredible work of our colleagues at the chain at ucsf and others who are taking um paralyzed human beings um and learning to translate the electrical signals of neurons and vary areas, including speech and language areas to computer screens that type out what these people are thinking. In other words, paralyzed people can put their thoughts on into riding. That's a pretty extreme and wonderful example of recovery of function that is sure to continue to evolve. But I think we are headed towards time, not too long from now, where my thoughts can be translated into words on a page if I allow that to happen.

Yeah so in any chains work I which I mire quite a bit in side in my papers um I think he's really one of those at the leading edge of trying to understand within humans uh the the neurobiology speech and he may not say IT directly, but I I talking about this that supports this idea that the speech circuit in a separate language module, I don't really think that there is a separation there.

So with with that knowledge, yes, and putting electrodes s in the human brain and then translating those electrical signals, speeds can get, we can start to tell what is that person thinking? why? Because we often think in terms of speech, uh and um without saying words and that's a scary a thought.

And now imagine if you can now translate those into a signal that transmit something wirelessly. And so from some distant part of the planet, hearing your speech from a wireless signal without you speaking. Ah so probably that won't be done in an ethical way.

Who knows? You know that the I mean the ethics of doing that probably you know might not happen but knows we have these song birds, you know we apply the same technique to them. We can start to hear what they're singing in their dreams or whatever, uh, even though they don't produce sound.

So we can find out by testing on them. It's and it's for those listening who are interested in getting Better at speaking and understanding languages. Are there any tools that you recommend? And here again, I I realized you're not a speech therapy.

But here i'm not thinking about emilio, any kind of speech efficiency. I'm thinking, for instance, do you recommend that people read different types of riding um would you recommend that people learn how to dance in order to become Better at expressing themselves verbally? um. And feel free to have some some degrees of freedom in this answer.

This these are obviously not p reviewed studies that we're referring to over, although there may be um but i'm struck by the number of things that you do exceedingly ly well and I can't help but ask well that the singing that which I realize that may your brother in pain and say this might not be quite as good as your brothers yet but is getting you'll surpassing i'm guessing at some point getting that exactly there you go you know, should kids learn how to dance and read hard books and simple books? Uh, what do you recommend? Should adults learn how to do that? Everyone wants to know how to keep their brain working Better, so to speak. But also, I think people want to be able to speak well and people want .

to be able to understand well yeah so what i've discovered personally right is that so when I switch from a pursuing a career in science, from the career and dance, um I thought one day of IT stopped dancing um but I haven't because if I find IT fulfilling for me um you know just as a life experience so ever since I want started college, you know my late teens and early twenties, I I kept dancing even all this day.

And they're been periods of time like during the pandemic where I slowed down on dancing and southworth um and and when you do that, you realize, okay, they're the part of your body where your muscle tone decreases a little bit and somewhat in or you could start to gain weight or I somehow don't gain weight that easily. I think it's related to my dance, if that's meaningful to your audience um but what I found is you know in in in science we like to think of a separation between movement and action and cognition and there is a separation for you between perception and production. Cognition being perception, production being movement, right? But if the speech pathways is next in the movement pathways, what I discover is by dancing, IT is helping me think.

IT is helping. Keeping my brain fresh is not just moving. My muscles are moving, or using the the circuitry in my brain to do control a whole big body. You need a lot of brain tissue to do that.

And so I argue, if you want to stay cognitively intact into your old age, you Better to be moving and you Better be doing a consistently, whether it's dancing, walking, running and also practicing speech, oratory speech and software or singing is controlling the brain circuits that are moving your facial musculature. And it's going to keep your cognitive circuits also into him. And i'm i'm convinced of that for my own personal ence.

Now for me, long, slow runs are a wonderful way to kind of loosen the joint for long podcast, especially the solo podcast, which can take many hours to record. And without those long, slow runs, at least the day before or even the morning of, I don't think I could do IT least not as well.

All right. Well, are the you're experiencing something similar?

So that's an end of two. Yeah, end of two. I tempted to learn how to dance because there are a lot of to learn how to dance if people can use their imagination.

I definitely want to get the opportunity. Talk about some of the newer work that you're into right now about genomes of animals, as you perhaps can tell from my quite authentic facial expressions, I adore the animal kingdom. I just find IT amazing.

And it's what the reason I went into neutral logy. In part, so many animals, so many different patterns of movement, so many body plans, so many specializations. What is the value of learning the genomes of all these animals? You know, I can think of uh, conservation base, you know, schemes of trying to preserve these precious a critters.

Um but what are you doing with the genome of these animals? What do you want to understand about their brain circuits? And how does this .

relate to some of the discussion? We've i've gotten very heavily involved in genomes. You not just to get at an individual gene involved in the trade of interest like spoken language um but I realized that you know nature has done natural experiments for us um with all these species out there with these various trades and the one that i'm setting like vocal learning has evolved multiple times among the animal kingdom even if it's rare, it's multiple times and uh the similar genetic changes occurred in the species but to find out what those genetic changes that are associated with the trade of interest and not the other trade like flying in birds as opposed this uh singing um you have to do what's call comparative genomics, even in the context of studying the brain.

And you need their genomes to compare the genome and do like a jeos genome association study, not just within a species like humans, but across species. And so you need a good genomes to do that. Plus i've discovered i'm also interested in evolution in origins.

How did these species come about a similar trade in last of three hundred million years or sixty million years depending who you're talking about? Uh, and you need a good pilot etic tree to do that. And to get a good pilot etic tree, you also need their genes.

And so because of this, I got involved in large scale consortium to produce genomes, many different species, including my vocal learners and my their closest relatives that i'm hands of uh, but I couldn't convince the funding agencies to give me the money to to do that just for my own project. But when you get a whole bunch of people together who want to study various trades, you know um heart disease or what or loss and gain of flight. And so for suddenly we all need lots of genomes to do this. And so now they've got me into a project to lead something called a vertie genome project to eventually sequence all seventy thousand species on the planet, uh and uh earth bio gene project, all you Carry out species, all two million of them uh and and to no longer being a situation where I wish I had this genome now we have the genetic code of all life on the planet.

Create a database of all their trades and find the genetic association with everything uh out there that makes a difference from one species to another uh one more piece of uh of the equation to enter the story is what I didn't realize as a neurotic scientists were that these genomes are not only incomplete, uh but there have lots of arizona false gene duplications where mother and father crime stones were so different from each other that the genome algorithm assembly algorithms treated them as two different genes in this part of the chromosome so there are a lot of these false duplicated genes that people thought were real ed, but were not or missing part ts of the genome because the enzymes used to sequence the DNA couldn't get through this regulatory region that bolted up on itself and made IT hard to sequence. And so I end up in these consortium, uh, pulling in the genome sequencing companies, developing the technology to work with us to improve IT further in the computer science guys who then take that data and technology and try to make the complete genome and make the algorithms Better, to produce what we now just did recently, a LED by an effort. A phillip is the first human telemeter team merging e with no errors, all complete, no missing sequence.

And now I am trying to do the same thing with vertebrates. Uh, in other species, actually, we improved that before we got to the what we call a tilman to timber from one end of from to another. And what we're discovering is in this dark matter of the genome that was missing before turns out to be some regulatory regions that are specialized in both learning species and we think are involved in in developing speed circuits.

incredible. Well, so much to learn and that we're going to learn from this information early on in these genome projects and connect on projects. I confess I was a little bit cynically.

This would be about about ten, fifteen years ago. I I thought, okay, necessary, but not sufficient for anything. We need IT, but it's not clear what's gona happen. But you just gave a very clear example of what we stand to learn from this kind of information and um and I know from the conservation side, there's a huge interest in this because even though we would prefer to keep all these species alive rather than close them there, these sorts of projects do offer the possibility of potentially recreating species that were lost due to our own ignorance or um missteps or .

what have you yes and and along those lines um because you know regard involved in genomics. Some of the first species that we start working on are critically endanger species and i'm doing that not only for a perspective to understand their brains and the genes involved in their brain function, but I feel like it's a moral duty. So the fact that now I become more involved in genome ology and have helped develop these tools for more complete genome, let's capture their their genetic code now before they're gone. Uh and could we use that information, uh, to resurrect the species at some future time, if not in my lifetime, in some time in the future and generations ahead of us. And so um in anticipation of that, we create a database we call the genome k uh in no pun intended like no iz arc a meant to store the genetic code as complete genome assemblies as possible for all species on the planet uh to be used for basic science but also some point in the future uh and because of that uh funding agencies or private foundations that are insurance and conservation have been reaching out to me now a neuroscientists uh to help them out in producing high quality genome data of endanger species that they can use like revive and restore who went to resurrect the passenger pigeon or colossal, who wants to resurrect the wooly mamas. And so we're producing high quality genomes for these groups, for the conservation projects.

What a terrific, important initiative. And I think for those listening today, they now certainly understand the value of under of deeply understanding the brain structures and genomes of different species. Because I confess, even though I knew a bit of the songbird literary, and I certainly understand that humans have speech and language, I had no idea that there was so much convergence, function, structure and genomes.

And to me, you know, I feel a lot more like an ape than I do a song bird. And yet here we are with the understanding that there's a lot more similarity between the song birds and humans. And I certainly ever thought before.

yeah, something very close to home for us humans. I can give you an example of is evolution of skin color. Uh, skin color, we use IT.

Unfortunately for racism and support, we use IT also for good things to let in more light or let out less light. Depending on the part of the planet, you know, our population evolved in, and most people think dark skin. People all evolve in the same dark skin person, and lights in people all evolved in the same lights in person. But that's not the case. Dark skin and light skin amongst humans has evolved independently multiple times like know the pacific, ireland's versus africa and and it's just depending on the angle of light hitting the earth as to whether you need more protection from the sun or less protection uh to that also associated advice in d sentences in the skin and so um and each time uh where a darker or lighter skin evolved independently. He hit the same gene um you know the and melon interceptor that's right yes yeah genes that are involved the melon information uh and so um those genes involve some of the same mutations even in different species is not just humans uh in in equatorial regions, their darker skin animals and going away from the .

equation I think .

archie foxes and the and so and so some of the same genes are used an evolutionary perspective to evolve in a similar way within and across species. incredible. And that same thing happened in the brain to the language is no exception.

We have to say somebody who is a new career neuroscientist, but as I mentioned several times, that who also adores the anal kingdom but is also obsessed with speech and language and um at a distance not as a as a practitioner of of of music and dance um it's been an incredible conversation and opportunity for me to learn I know I speak for a tremens number of people when I I just really want to say thank you for joining us.

You are incredibly busy. It's clear from your description of your size and your knowledge ways that you are involving a huge number of things. Um IT very busy. But thank you for taking the time to speak to all of us. Thank you for the work that you're doing, both on speech and language, but also this important work on genomes and conservation, a of danger species and far more. And I have to say, uh, if you would agree to come back and beat to us again sometime, i'm certain that if we were to sit down even six months or a year from now.

there's can be a lot more to come here we have some things cooking and and thank you for inviting me here to get the word out to the community um of what's going in the science world.

But we're honor and very grateful to work thank you welcome.

Thank you for .

joining me today for my disgusting with doctor eric jarvis. If you'd like to learn more about his laboratory's work, you can go to jarvis lab spell J A R V I S lab, all one where java ash lab dot net. And there you can learn about all the various studies taking place in his laboratory as well.

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