How do we understand language? By means of dancing neurons in
the brain, a network built on sound frequencies mapped in time.
At least that's the way Xiaoqin Wang has found it works in
marmosets, New World tropical monkeys with tufted ears, long
tails, and a propensity for elaborate chatter...well, let's call
that vocalizations. "You cannot say they have speech," says
Wang, a neuroscientist in the Department of Biomedical
Engineering. "But some people would say they have their
language. The main difference is quantity, their capacity to
process many different sounds. We are able to process a lot more
sounds." Wang believes his work on monkey communication has
implications for human speech. Indeed, he has already been part
of recent groundbreaking research to fashion "glasses for the
ears." Built on the latest neuroscientific findings as to how
primates code and decode speechlike signals, this ear-training
method helped dyslexic children improve their understanding of
speech by two years, after only one month