That'd explain all the chimps at the Presidential Debates who clap the apes' on stage. Mike
--- On Thu, 5/4/12, Edgar Owen <[email protected]> wrote: From: Edgar Owen <[email protected]> Subject: [Zen] Fwd: [evol-psych] Paper: The sound of one-hand clapping: handedness and perisylvian neural correlates of a communicative gesture in chimpanzees To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, 5 April, 2012, 22:30 > Your Koan for the day! :-) Edgar > > The sound of one-hand clapping: handedness and perisylvian neural correlates > of a communicative gesture in chimpanzees > Adrien Meguerditchian, Molly J. Gardner, Steven J. Schapiro and William D. > Hopkins > Abstract > Whether lateralization of communicative signalling in non-human primates > might constitute prerequisites of hemispheric specialization for language is > unclear. In the present study, we examined (i) hand preference for a > communicative gesture (clapping in 94 captive chimpanzees from two research > facilities) and (ii) the in vivo magnetic resonance imaging brain scans of 40 > of these individuals. The preferred hand for clapping was defined as the one > in the upper position when the two hands came together. Using computer manual > tracing of regions of interest, we measured the neuroanatomical asymmetries > for the homologues of key language areas, including the inferior frontal > gyrus (IFG) and planum temporale (PT). When considering the entire sample, > there was a predominance of right-handedness for clapping and the > distribution of right- and left-handed individuals did not differ between the > two facilities. The direction of hand preference (right- versus left-handed subjects) for clapping explained a significant portion of variability in asymmetries of the PT and IFG. The results are consistent with the view that gestural communication in the common ancestor may have been a precursor of language and its cerebral substrates in modern humans. > > Source: The Royal Society > http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/279/1735/1959.abstract?etoc > >
