Resumen: |
It is widely accepted in the scientific community that Language is produced by an organism, which via its motor cortex, sets in motion vocal and hand-movements. Recent FMR studies show motor cortex activity for verbal motor tasks (Brown & Hagoort 2003:220). However, little is known about the specific biochemical mechanisms the brain activates or inhibits when using language. One of the most important discoveries of the XX century has been to realise that only approximately 30,000 genes can generate 20 billion neurons in a human brain and produce remarkably varied behaviour (Marcus 2004). Despite this neuronal explosion, it is revealed from imaging studies that only a small fraction of these neurons are activated for language production or interpretation and that regardless of the apparent complexity that any language may show, a human brain can effortlessly master it with little exposure to the environment. This fact may perhaps indicate that few genes and little environmental exposure may be necessary and sufficient to produce much variation in behaviour. What seems universally accepted by followers of neutral monism, is that knowing how gene regulation affects the physiology and biochemistry of brain cells, will eventually elucidate how linguistic effects emerge from these anatomical and biochemical interactions (Edelman & Tononi 2001, Marcus 2004). |