This study identifies and analyzes statistically significant overlaps between selective sweep screens in anatomically modern humans and several domesticated species. The results obtained suggest that (paleo-)genomic data can be exploited to complement the fossil record and support the idea of self-domestication in Homo sapiens, a process that likely intensified as our species populated its niche. Our analysis lends support to attempts to capture the “domestication syndrome” in terms of alterations to certain signaling pathways and cell lineages, such as the neural crest.

No abstract

Humans can communicate information on numerosity by means of number words (e.g. one hundred, a couple), but also through Number morphology (e.g. through the singular vs. the plural forms of a noun). Agreement violations involving Number morphology (e.g. *one apples) are well known to elicit specific ERP components such as the Left Anterior Negativity (LAN); yet, the relationship between a morphological Number value (e.g. singular vs. plural) and its referential numerosity has been scantly considered in the literature. Moreover, even if agreement violations have been proved very useful, they do not typically characterise the everyday language usage, thus narrowing the scope of the results. In this study we investigated Number morphology from a different perspective, by focusing on the ERP correlates of congruence and incongruence between a depicted numerosity and noun phrases. To this aim we designed a picture-phrase matching paradigm in Italian. In each trial, a picture depicting one or four objects was followed by a grammatical phrase made up of a quantifier and a content noun inflected either in the singular or in the plural. When analysing ERP time-locked to the content noun, plural phrases after pictures presenting one object elicited a larger negativity, similar to a LAN effect. No significant congruence effect was found in the case of the phrases whose morphological Number value conveyed a numerosity of one. Considering the LAN as an index of morpho-syntactic incongruence, these results suggest that 1) LAN-like effects can be triggered independently from the grammaticality of the utterances and irrespective the P600 component; 2) the reference to a numerosity can be partially encoded in an incremental way when processing Number morphology; and, most importantly, 3) the processing of the morphological Number value of plural is different from that of singular as the former shows a narrower interpretability than the latter.

Listeners predict upcoming information during language comprehension. However, how this ability is implemented is still largely unknown. Here, we tested the hypothesis proposing that language production mechanisms have a role in prediction. We studied 2 electroencephalographic correlates of predictability during speech comprehension—pre-target alpha–beta (8–30 Hz) power decrease and the post-target N400 event-related potential effect—in a population with impaired speech-motor control, i.e. adults who stutter (AWS), compared to typically fluent adults (TFA). Participants listened to sentences that could either constrain towards a target word or not, modulating its predictability. As a complementary task, participants also performed context-driven word production. Compared to TFA, AWS not only displayed atypical neural responses in production, but, critically, they showed a different pattern also in comprehension. Specifically, while TFA showed the expected pre-target power decrease, AWS showed a power increase in frontal regions, associated with speech-motor control. In addition, the post-target N400 effect was reduced for AWS with respect to TFA. Finally, we found that production and comprehension power changes were positively correlated in TFA, but not in AWS. Overall, the results support the idea that processes and neural structures prominently devoted to speech planning also support prediction during speech comprehension.