‘Language gene’ speeds learning

In a recent article, Christiane Schreiweis, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and colleagues presented experimental work conducted on mice.  In an effort to elucidate the significance of the FOXP2 gene and its involvement in muscle movements for human speech, these scientists genetically engineered mice to produce the human form of the gene FOXP2.  The significance of this gene was suggested in a study conducted in 1990.  In that study, three generations of a British family, which was known as the KE family, suffered from severe speech problems: an inherited mutation inactivated a copy of FOXP2.  In mice, it was found that those mice engineered to make the human FOXP2 protein produced altered squeaks compared to those mice with the mouse version of FOXP2.  Also, the mice with human FOXP2 were shown to contain neurons with more and longer dendrites.  In addition to this, these mice became unresponsive after repeated electrical stimulation to the basal ganglia, which is a trait called long-term depression that typifies learning and memory.   Experiments involving mazes proved that mice with the human FOXP2 gene were quicker to learn.  These scientists believe that the FOXP2 gene in humans plays an important role in perfecting facial movements involved in speech.  FOXP2 involvement in learning and memory are still not completely understood, however.  These experiments could prove to be major breakthroughs for the understanding of human speech.