Alan Alda recently chatted with Steven Pinker in his office in the Psychology Department at Harvard University. Much of Pinker’s research has focused on language – and not surprisingly language is central to his conception of what makes us human.

Watch this video clip to learn more about three big things Pinker thinks set us apart from other animals.

Researcher Brian Butterworth

One of the earliest things American children are taught is how to count items out loud: one, two, three… But how much do humans understand about numbers before they learn this vocabulary? An interesting study conducted by Brian Butterworth and colleagues at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London addressed this question with Australian Aboriginal children, whose society doesn’t use counting words beyond one, two, few and many.

Check out these articles for more info:

• TVNZ: Humans may have innate math skills
• redOrbit: Is the ability to count innate?

When Alan volunteered to wear the EEG cap a while back, this is what he watched.

Courtesy Brain Development Lab, Univeristy of Oregon

Filming conversation between Alan and neuroscientist Scott Frey. Note the grabbing tool on the table… can Alan successfully grasp the paper cup with it? Photo © Maggie Villiger 2008

The first few days of shooting with Alan have nicely confirmed one of the key inspirations for the series: that many very different sciences — and scientists — are out there looking for the Spark — even if they don’t know it. A couple of days ago we were in Oregon, peering with both an MRI and a brain wave monitor into Alan’s brain to find out how he employs it for two of the most distinctively human traits, language and tool use.

Alan models the EEG cap that will measure Event Related Potentials through his skull as he listens to spoken language. Photo © Larry Engel 2008

It turns out that the places in his brain involved in both talking and planning how to use a tool are physically quite close together. Is there an evolutionary connection? We’ll see…

These days with Alan have also confirmed how key he is to the project.

He patiently endured perhaps an hour in the claustrophobic and noisy MRI scanner imagining how he would use a tool, and another hour in what looks like a swimmer’s rubber hat studded with electrodes watching animated penguins talking gibberish (but grammatically correct gibberish).

Then he conducted lively and probing conversations with the scientists doing the studies — and also made them laugh, something you don’t see too much of in the average science documentary.

– Graham Chedd

photo by Kabir Bakie

All great apes, including human beings, have vocal tract air sacs that they use to call out loud. Ours have evolved to be smaller than the other apes’, leaving them with louder voices.

But the decrease in volume was a tradeoff for better control, a necessary precursor for language.

Learn more in the full story from Discovery News.

When new discoveries are made in the field of neuroscience, you often hear that particular areas of the brain are active at particular times, or that other areas don’t have anything to do with specific skills. Once you dig deeper than the headline, you might start to wonder how scientists actually KNOW what’s happening in “the brain.” There’s not just one master brain out there for them to crack!

Neuroscientists rely on volunteers who are willing to have their brains analyzed while they perform particular tasks. With luck, over time the scientists are able to look at data from enough individuals to get a sense of what is happening in an “average” brain during their task of interest.

Brian Moore is one of the people who has volunteered a couple of times for Helen Neville’s language fMRI studies at the University of Oregon. Find out why in this video clip. Brian is deaf, so he signs his remarks. The voice you’ll hear is that of his interpreter, whose hands you might see a bit at the right of the frame.

Most research programs are always on the lookout for volunteers… if this possibility intrigues you, check out what’s happening at your local colleges and universities!

Volunteer Brian Moore receives instructions via a sign language interpreter before sliding into the scanner.

Today we’re in Eugene, Oregon. We started in the morning with what turned into a rather chaotic fMRI scene — six people in two locations. We were working with a deaf volunteer for a fascinating investigation into language and how the human brain understands grammar. The researchers are trying to figure out how we talk to one another — all over the world and in so many languages.

Warning sign outside the scanner room

What parts of our brain process language and its syntax? And what connections are there to other activities we humans pursue? What makes our species so good at gab?

Our volunteer went into the MRI and had to communicate with his sign language interpreter through a combination of mirrors and small video cameras. Because I had turned off all the overhead lights to create a more dramatic look for the scene, the volunteer had trouble seeing the interpreter in the control room via the mirrors and video screens.

The problem turned out to be that we had inadvertently turned on the neutral density filter on the camera so the monitor was dark not because of the lighting but because of human error…

We also can’t go very far into the MRI room with the camera or any ferrous (iron) metal. Because the MRI is a huge magnet, it sucks metallic objects from your hands into the donut of the MRI. If there is a person in there, there could be serious injury or death. Not to mention it would be the end of a very expensive piece of research equipment!

Larry Engel and John Garrett record picture and sound from just inside the doorway, while Graham Chedd keeps an eye on the monitor.

So we all tread carefully when entering the room. I can set a light at the perimeter and stand only a foot or so inside. We marked my forward limit with gaffers tape.

But because I enter a strong magnetic field even at the doorway of the MRI room, I still have to worry about the tape itself since it’s magnetic. So we always start with a fresh tape to make sure we don’t lose anything we shot before if the magnetic field erases the tape.

Also, the camera’s viewfinder gets instantly distorted — squeezed — by the magnetic field, making framing hard. Another step into the room and the image goes fuzzy — making it really hard to focus as well. Fortunately, these problems are only in the viewfinder, not on the tape. But I did have to rely on Graham just outside the door looking at the field monitor for focus and framing adjustments.

Nonetheless it was a good shoot and we got Alan into the MRI as well — got to see his brain at work from the inside!

More later, and thanks for reading.

Larry Engel
Director and Director of Photography

The bonobo Nyota points to symbols on the lexigram board to communicate with humans. Great Ape Trust of Iowa photo.

Many researchers point to language as a clear dividing line between humans and our closest living relatives, the apes. The Great Ape Trust is dedicated to exploring the language skills of bonobos and orangutans.

This video from Slate presents a reporter’s visit to the Trust and his interactions with the apes and the lexigram boards they use to communicate.

Watch the video.

Visit The Great Ape Trust Web site to learn more.