Nature Neuroscience
6, 774 - 781 (2003)
Published online: 22 June 2003; | doi:10.1038/nn1077
Broca's area and the language instinctMariacristina Musso1, Andrea Moro2, Volkmar Glauche1, Michel Rijntjes1, Jürgen Reichenbach3, Christian Büchel1
& Cornelius Weiller11
NeuroImage Nord, Department of Neurology, University of Hamburg, Martinistr. 52, Hamburg 20246, Germany. 2
University "Vita salute" San Raffaele, Via Olgettina 5 Milano, Italy. 3
Institute for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Friedrich Schiller University, 1807740 Jena, Germany.
Correspondence should be addressed to Mariacristina Musso musso@uke.uni-hamburg.deLanguage acquisition in humans relies on abilities like abstraction and use of syntactic rules, which are absent in other animals. The neural correlate of acquiring new linguistic competence was investigated with two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. German native speakers learned a sample of 'real' grammatical rules of different languages (Italian or Japanese), which, although parametrically different, follow the universal principles of grammar (UG). Activity during this task was compared with that during a task that involved learning 'unreal' rules of language. 'Unreal' rules were obtained manipulating the original two languages; they used the same lexicon as Italian or Japanese, but were linguistically illegal, as they violated the principles of UG. Increase of activation over time in Broca's area was specific for 'real' language acquisition only, independent of the kind of language. Thus, in Broca's area, biological constraints and language experience interact to enable linguistic competence for a new language.
|
