Monkeying with the piano

Neuroscience The anatomical organization of auditory cortical pathways in nonhuman primates (NHPs) shows remarkable similarities with humans. So why don't NHPs have a more speech-like communication system? Archakov et al. trained macaques to perform an auditory-motor task using a purpose-built piano. Mapping brain activity by functional magnetic resonance imaging showed that sound sequences activated the auditory midbrain and cortex. More importantly, sound sequences that had been learned by self-production also activated motor cortex and basal ganglia. This shows that monkeys can form auditory-motor links and that this is not the reason why they do not speak. Instead, the origin of speech in humans may have required the evolution of a command apparatus that controls the upper vocal tract. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117 , 15242 (2020).