The Brain, the language machine

More and more I become convinced that the brain is a big language machine, and most of its function can be seen as the works of a system learning and articulating language. Moreover, I am convinced that the babbling and motor exploration that babies perform in their first months of life actually serve the same function and have precisely the same cognitive objectives, but are nevertheless carried out by different systems in the brain. Such verbal and motor babbling serve the purpose of priming for the acquisition of vocabulary (verbal and motor respectively) and learning an alphabet for future learning.  The acquisition of vocabulary not only requires the recognition and subsequent articulation of verbal and motor patterns, but also the consolidation of meaning for each pattern, in terms of the sense that the articulation of a particular pattern has to the current state and goals of the organism.

The brain is all about language, simply because language is all about pattern matching and articulating within a specific set of rules or grammars. (This is clearly evident in verbal contexts such as learning a new language.) When we learn how to perform a new motor behavior, say learning a new type of dance or martial art, we basically acquire a new motor vocabulary in the form of new motor patterns within a new grammar. That’s also what occurs during a simple task such as walking, namely, we express motor “words” being articulated by the motor cortex in the brain (say, during walking the motor cortex is articulating basic “motor” words like “ab-cd-ab-cd”). Therefore, learning a new motor behavior, such as learning to play an instrument implies learning a new motor vocabulary based on a motor “alphabet” already learned.

Therefore learning in the brain could be thought of as learning a new language by a specific system in the brain. In this new perspective, language as we know it today, that is oral/written language, is only a special case of a more general language acquisition/articulation device like the brain. However, although all animals exhibit motor behavior, not all of them develop a verbal language expressed orally, much less, expressed in written form. I think that this type of language, i.e. verbal language, which provides a species with a system of communication among its members, sits at the very top of the cognitive abilities that a species is capable of. It is a remarkable intellectual achievement from evolution, and if it’s true that language acquisition and articulation is all that brain systems do in their own cognitive domain, then verbal language could be thought of as the most advanced and sophisticated form of language system that ever appeared in nature.  Its emergence depends not only on the capacity of a species to develop abstract concepts, but also in motor abilities to articulate such concepts. (Remember that in Penfield’s homunculus a large amount of neuronal resources are devoted to hands, mouth and tongue: the main motor devices for communication in human beings).  Thus, it is the combination of these two particular features (most probably among several others) that constrains the emergence of verbal language across species.

Finally, as mentioned above, under this perspective verbal language is a special case of a more general language device whose principles are distributed all along the brain. This would imply that thought, the inner dialogue we have in the form of oral/acoustic communication, is a by-product of a language acquisition/articulation system within the auditory system. (Curiously, it has been reported that deaf people who communicate through sign language are able to formulate thoughts in the form of sign gestures in their minds.)