把支配语言处理的大脑左半球与偏手性联系起来的一项研究提示，人类的说话能力可能从一种类似于音节的发音和手势的组合中进化出来。Anne-Lise Giraud及其同事把脑电图（EEG） 和功能磁共振成像（fMRI）结合起来，从而监测了16位人类受试者在静息或观看视频的时候的大脑活动。与收听音节、基本感觉处理、口和手的运动有关的大脑区域在观看视频和静息的时候都表现出了左脑支配的说话的典型活动模式。
这组作者说，这些结果提示这些区域在硬件上是不对称的，而且可能形成了现代人类的左脑支配的说话和语言的基础。
这组科学家进一步指出，指挥嘴和手的运动的区域的大脑活动在与音节——而非音素——语音节律有关的频律方面都有内在的相似性。这组作者说，这些发现提示，大脑具有发出音节语音的硬件，但是需要音素（形成有意义的语言对比的最小声音），这个假说与有听力和无听力的新生儿的语言发展相兼容。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐英文摘要：
PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1007189107
Neurophysiological origin of human brain asymmetry for speech and language
Benjamin Morillona, Katia Lehongrea, Richard S. J. Frackowiakb,c, Antoine Ducorpsd, Andreas Kleinschmidte, David Poeppelf, and Anne-Lise Girauda,1
aInstitut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U960-Ecole Normale Supérieure, 75005 Paris, France;
bService de Neurologie, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, 1011 Lausanne, Switzerland;
cNeuroimaging Laboratory, Instituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico Santa Lucia, 00179 Rome, Italy;
dCentre de Neuroimagerie de Recherche, H?pital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, 75013 Paris, France;
eInstitut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U992 Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Commissariat á l’Energie Atomique, NeuroSpin, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France; and
fDepartment of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003
The physiological basis of human cerebral asymmetry for language remains mysterious. We have used simultaneous physiological and anatomical measurements to investigate the issue. Concentrating on neural oscillatory activity in speech-specific frequency bands and exploring interactions between gestural (motor) and auditory-evoked activity, we find, in the absence of language-related processing, that left auditory, somatosensory, articulatory motor, and inferior parietal cortices show specific, lateralized, speech-related physiological properties. With the addition of ecologically valid audiovisual stimulation, activity in auditory cortex synchronizes with left-dominant input from the motor cortex at frequencies corresponding to syllabic, but not phonemic, speech rhythms. Our results support theories of language lateralization that posit a major role for intrinsic, hardwired perceptuomotor processing in syllabic parsing and are compatible both with the evolutionary view that speech arose from a combination of syllable-sized vocalizations and meaningful hand gestures and with developmental observations suggesting phonemic analysis is a developmentally acquired process.
