Yannick Becker (@ybecker.bsky.social)

🚨 Language connection FOUND in chimpanzees? 🧠🗣️ For years, scientists thought the key to human language was a fibre connection, missing in chimp brains. New high-res brain scans just changed the game. 👀🐒 📖 Read the full story: rdcu.be/el857 1/n 🧵👇

Accordingly, even though a large proportion of modern day human communication is vocal, the key underlying brain infrastructure (still) operates in a flexible and amodal way. In other words, language is flexible because its neural basis is.”

We argue, that “departing from our last common ancestor with nonhuman primates, the language system in humans might have been exapted from an already flexible pre-existing system.

Patrick Trettenbrein and I wrote an eletter in reply to the great science review article by Arnon and colleagues (2025) that the field has been waiting for! #elettersSection" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

If you want to learn more, I'm presenting this study tomorrow Fri 16th of May ~10:30am at the Neuro-primatology symposium (@CdP_Ballesta) #neurofrance2025

🚨 Language connection FOUND in chimpanzees? 🧠🗣️ For years, scientists thought the key to human language was a fibre connection, missing in chimp brains. New high-res brain scans just changed the game. 👀🐒 📖 Read the full story: rdcu.be/el857 1/n 🧵👇

10/n 📖 Read the press release: cbs.mpg.de/2358103/202505… With amazing co-authors and funders (here online): @AlfredAnwander @FriedericiLab @TaiChimpProject @AWI_de @maxplanckpress @MPI_CBS @NatureComms @NaturePortfolio @FFyssen

9/n Huge kudos to the EBC Consortium behind this work—sourcing naturally or unavoidably deceased primates from the field all across Africa, from sanctuaries and from zoos all across Europe. The future of language research lies in both the lab and the wild. 🧪🌿

It turns out that AF-STG is indeed linked to communication (vocal AND gestural)!!! Great that parts of this project are finally seeing the light of day. Thanks to Adrien Meguerditchian (@ERC_Research), @NeuroSchool_mrs, @FFyssen for the support!

Indeed for some reason I got hooked by the arcuate fascicle (or fasciculus). And Erin across the ocean knew about tractography in chimpanzees! At the same time, Bill Hopkins had behavioural data on the same chimpanzees! And Suhas Vijayakumar was an incredible help!

Hey Arcuate freaks and geeks! I first contacted Erin Hecht in 2019. At the time, I was working on my PhD in France on communication correlates of homologous language regions in primates. But what about their interconnections? The article: rdcu.be/eifzU

Are humans the only species that communicates when a collaborator is missing information? @TownrowLuke and I show that our closest relatives, bonobos, can track when a partner is knowledgeable or ignorant, and tailor communication accordingly @PNASNews pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

2 scholarships for international applicants only! With @MindaBrain we jointly offer 2 four-year doctoral scholarships. These doctoral positions will be funded by the DAAD. More Infos here: mind-and-brain.de/doctoral-progr…