"Evolution rarely invents entirely new solutions. Instead, it tinkers with existing systems, repurposing and refining them for new functions. Before our ancestors developed language, they already possessed sophisticated systems for controlling movement-reaching for objects, grasping tools, navigating space. These systems shared a common architecture: a motor planning component in the frontal lobes, a sensory target component in the temporal and parietal lobes, and a translation system connecting the two."
"The revolutionary idea is that speech production may have evolved by duplicating and adapting this basic sensorimotor template, stacking multiple layers on top of each other. At the lowest level, this architecture controls the fine details of articulation-the precise movements of your tongue, lips, and jaw. At higher levels, it manages phonological patterns (the sound structure of words) and, at the highest level, even grammatical structure. Each level maintains the same basic organization: motor plans, sensory targets, and a system for translating between them."
Speech and language ability is recent in human evolution but relies on an ancient sensorimotor control architecture. That architecture places motor planning in frontal lobes, sensory targets in temporal and parietal lobes, and a translation system between them. Evolution repurposed and duplicated this template, stacking layers that govern articulation, phonological patterns, and grammatical structure. Each linguistic level preserves the same organization of motor plans, sensory targets, and translation mechanisms, with internal feedback loops that catch errors before they occur. Consequently, injury to different brain regions produces distinct speech and language impairments at the same linguistic level.
Read at Psychology Today
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