Next week, on the 1st October, there will be a new language and genetics department opening at the Max Planck Institute, the first research department in the world entirely devoted to understanding the relationship between language and genes!!!
This excites me so I wanted to share the news.
This statement is from Simon Fisher, who will head the new department about what they will be trying to achieve:
‘We aim to uncover the DNA variations which ultimately affect different facets of our communicative abilities, not only in children with language-related disorders but also in the general population, and even through to people with exceptional linguistic skills’, says L&G director Simon Fisher. ‘Our work attempts to bridge the gaps between genes, brains, speech and language, by integrating molecular findings with data from other levels of analysis, particularly cell biology and neuro-imaging. In addition, we hope to trace the evolutionary history and worldwide diversity of the key genes, which may shed new light on language origins.’
More signs of the growing and diversifying field of language evolution!
Here’s a link to the news on the MPI website: http://www.mpi.nl/news/new-mpi-department-language-genetics
Wow. Thanks for sharing this! I love the Max-Planck-Institutes and this new department really looks like it could do a lot for the field of language evolution. I’m psyched.