PSYCH 161 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Model Organism, Psych, Ludwig Lichtheim
Document Summary
Morphological similarity reflects genetic inheritance from a common. The concept of an animal model for cognitive/brain function is based on evolutionary ancestor homology. There are no homologies because language, unlike vision, is unique to h. sapiens. But, homologies may exist between language systems and the non-linguistic systems out of which they evolved. Consider that language ability has many potential homologies to non-language cognitive function: Perception, action, long-term memory, short-term memory, categorization, abstraction, decision making, sequencing, hierarchical processing . Language evolved in the context of a sophisticated neurocomputational machine. That was capable of long & short-term memory. The neurocomputational landscape out of which language evolved. We should be able to constrain our architectural and computational hypotheses for language by looking to homologies with non-language systems in our own brain and in non-human animals. The brain must perform two computationally distinct tasks with auditory speech information: Compute how to reproduce it with the vocal tract. Partially networks for language production vs. comprehension.
