Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Link: A fascinating article about the genetics of language

I discovered this article yesterday and thought you all would find it fascinating. Apparently there is a family in England whose members have difficulty associating word sounds with meanings. Obviously this has a large effect on their ability to deal with standard modes of education, and also influences their social interactions. The cool part is, they have traced this difficulty to a gene called FOXP2, and are getting insights into the genetics of language.

And by the way, for those who might be wondering if we have a "language gene," it's not as simple as all that. FOXP2 occurs through a lot of nonhuman world species as well. So a further exploration of the complexities of FOXP2 is here

5 comments:

  1. Fascinating. Thanks for pointing this article out. As the parent of a young person with autism with semantic pragmatic elements in his diagnosis I can't help but wonder if this gene is linked in too.

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  2. Foxp2 is actally the gene that was problematic for the other famous British family with language problems "KE", I remember how the news got all excited about it a few years ago and I spent about 2 months explaining to all the relatives that, "no, they haven't found the language gene, just like they haven't found a 'thought gene' even though there are lots of genes that they know are involved with thought"

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  3. Erm, that was me for some reason it has me signed in as unknown?

    -Erin

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    1. Well, thanks for the comment, Erin! KE is also mentioned in the article. And I'm sure a lot of people were jumping on it for a language gene, because people seem very keen to find one. I'm actually glad there isn't one - a lot more people would have problems with language!

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