Brief Communications
Nature 433, 31-32 (6 January 2005) | doi:10.1038/433031a; Published online 5 January 2005
Linguistic perception: Neural processing of a whistled language
Manuel Carreiras1, Jorge Lopez2, Francisco Rivero1 and David Corina3
Silbo Gomero is a whistled language that is a rare and endangered surrogate of Spanish, used by shepherds on the island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands for communication over long distances on difficult terrain. Here we show that areas of the brain normally associated with spoken-language function are also activated in proficient whistlers, but not in controls, when they are listening to Silbo Gomero. Our findings demonstrate that the language-processing regions of the human brain can adapt to a surprisingly wide range of signalling forms.
- Departamento de Psicología Cognitiva, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, Tenerife, 38205, Spain
- IMETISA, Hospital Universitario de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, 28320, Spain
- Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195–1525, USA
Correspondence to: Manuel Carreiras1 Email: mcarreir@ull.es
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