Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Processing local transitions versus long-distance syntactic hierarchies.

Angela D Friederici1

  • 1Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Neuropsychology, PO Box 500 355, 04303 Leipzig, Germany. angelafr@cbs.mpg.de <angelafr@cbs.mpg.de>

Trends in Cognitive Sciences
|May 29, 2004
PubMed
Summary

Non-human primates learn simple grammars but not complex ones, unlike humans. This difference highlights a key evolutionary step in language development and suggests distinct brain systems for grammar processing.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Grammar acquisition in preschool children is related to white matter maturation of the dorsal language network.

Developmental cognitive neuroscience·2026
Same author

The coming decade of digital brain research: A vision for neuroscience at the intersection of technology and computing.

Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)·2025
Same author

Assessing quantitative MRI techniques using multimodal comparisons.

PloS one·2025
Same author

Versatile use of chimpanzee call combinations promotes meaning expansion.

Science advances·2025
Same author

Characterizing Directional Dynamics of Semantic Prediction Based on Inter-regional Temporal Generalization.

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience·2025
Same author

Functional and structural brain asymmetries in language processing.

Handbook of clinical neurology·2025

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Linguistics

Background:

  • A study found non-human primates can learn finite-state grammars but not phrase-structure grammars.
  • Humans easily learn both types of grammars.
  • This species difference is considered crucial for understanding human language evolution.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if different neural systems in the human brain underlie the learning of finite-state versus phrase-structure grammars.
  • To explore the neural basis of the human language faculty's evolutionary divergence.

Main Methods:

  • This section would typically detail the neuroimaging or experimental techniques used.
  • Potential methods include functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or electroencephalography (EEG) during grammar learning tasks.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • This section would present findings on distinct or overlapping neural activation patterns.
  • Results would indicate whether specific brain regions are differentially involved in processing the two grammar types.

Conclusions:

  • The study aims to determine if distinct neural substrates support different levels of grammatical complexity in humans.
  • Findings could illuminate the neural mechanisms underlying the evolution of human language capabilities.