MPI Colloquium: Dr. Cedric Boeckx

Title of the talk: Neotenies

Abstract

In this talk I will synthesize results from work we have been doing on the biological underpinnings of human brain development, trying to extract lessons from (ancient) genomes. A range of evidence points to a special ontogenic trajectory in Homo sapiens. This raises the obvious, but difficult question of what changes in brain ontogeny may have meant for the emergence of our linguistic capacity. Put differently, did changing the time course of brain development shape the time course of language acquisition?

What I have learned so far seems to point to changes that mostly impact maturational schedule(s) and aspects of social cognition (i.e., the ecology in which language learning takes place). I’ll review the evidence we have found for a range of heterochronies (“neotenies”) and phenotypic associations with sociability. I’ll conclude the talk with a discussion of what this means for how we think about “knowledge of language”.

Suggested as pre-readings:

• CHD2 Dosage Ties Autolysosomal Pathway to Cortical Maturation in Disease and Evolution (link)
• Regulatory logic of human cortex evolution by combinatorial perturbations (link)
• Benchmarking cerebellar organoids to model autism spectrum disorder and
  human brain evolution (link)

A lighter back ground read: "What made us hunter-gatherers of words" (link)