Practising a tool-using task helps people do better in a test of complex language understanding – and the benefits go the other way too. The crossover may happen because some of the same parts of the brain are involved in tool use and language, says Claudio Brozzoli at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Lyon, France. One idea is that language evolved by co-opting some of the brain networks involved in tool use. Both abilities involve sequences of precise physical movements – whether of the hands or of the lips, jaws, tongue and voice box – which must be done in the right order to be effective. Brozzoli's team asked volunteers to lie in a brain scanner while carrying out tasks involving either tool use or understanding complex sentences.

Microsoft's Kinect has already proved its credentials in reading simple hand and body movements in the gaming world. But now a team of Chinese researchers have added sign language to its motion-sensing capabilities. Scientists at Microsoft Research Asia recently demonstrated software that allows Kinect to read sign language using hand tracking. What's impressive is that it can do this in real-time, translating sign language to spoken language and vice versa at conversational speeds. The system, dubbed the Kinect Sign Language Translator, is capable of capturing a conversation from both sides.