no-modularity-at-all

[Sydney M Lamb]

In response to Brian's remarks,

>  . . .  When functionalists
> look to neurology, it is equally discouraging to find no anatomical level
> grounding of the human-primate discontinuity.
>

That ain't the way I heerd it.  Two points:

  1. According to Norman Geschwind, in "The
development of the brain and the evolution of language" (Georgetown Round
Table, 1964), (I quote just a few important summarizing passages here):
  "The monkey does not appear to have a suffieient basis anatomically to
form extensive non-limbic intermodal assiciations." (164)
  "The human brain at birth is perhaps 40% of its adult size while that
of the ape's is nearly 70% of full-grown size. . . .  The great increase
in the size of man's brain is primarily in the association areas.... The
greatest relative growth of the human brain compared to that of the
subhuman primates is in the inferior parietal region... .  The impressive
development if the inferior posterior parietal region (the region of the
angular gyrus) is so great that some authors...even assert that this
region is almost unique to man....  This region ... is admirably suited
to [act as a] way station by which associations may be formed between
these non-limbic modalities.  This area may well be termed 'the
asssociation cortex' of the association cortexes.  By providing the basis
for the formation of non-limbic associations, it provides the anatomical
basis for language --- or at least for object-naming." (165)
   In my current hypothesis of the anatomical correlates of the components
of my connectionist model, the angular gyrus is devoted mainly to lexical
connections (or entirely to lexical connections if we take a broad enough
view of what they are).

  2.  I read somewhere recently, but now can't remember where, that
chimpanzees have little or no arcuate fasciculus.  Is this report
reliable?  Does anybody know?  If so, it if of great interest, as this fiber
bundle is also vitally important for human language, since it connects
Phonological Recognition to Phonological Production.

   --- Syd Lamb .