Neurological Foundations of Socio-Communicative Cognition in Chimpanzees
William Hopkins
Division of Psychobiology, Yerkes National Primate Research Center & Department of Psychology, Agnes Scott College
Like human children, chimpanzees engage in a number of socio-communicative behaviors that are used to communicative with each other and with humans including pointing, vocal signaling and the integration of gaze between referential signals and the social recipients. Despite the well documented behavioral studies of communication in chimpanzees relatively little is known about the neurological foundations of these abilities. Recently, our laboratory have been using both structural magnetic resonance (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) to evaluate the neural correlates of gestural and vocal communication in chimpanzees. In this paper, we discuss the results of these studies, in particular, the role that the homolog of Broca’s area plays in the functional use of gestures, vocal signaling and tool use in chimpanzees. We suggest that common cognitive mechanisms underlying tool use and early socio-communicative behavior, including the innovation of novel communicative signals, have evolved in the context of expansion and lateralization of the frontal lobe of primates.