Why language survives as the dominant communication tool: A neurocognitive perspective.

By focusing on the contributions of subcortical structures, our commentary suggests that the functions of the hippocampus underlying "displacement," a feature enabling humans to communicate things and situations that are remote in space and time, make language more effective at social bonding. Based on the functions of the basal ganglia and hippocampus, evolutionary trajectory of the subcomponents of music and language in different species will also be discussed.

A domain-general perspective on the role of the basal ganglia in language and music: Benefits of music therapy for the treatment of aphasia.

In addition to cortical lesions, mounting evidence on the links between language and the subcortical regions suggests that subcortical lesions may also lead to the emergence of aphasic symptoms. In this paper, by emphasizing the domain-general function of the basal ganglia in both language and music, we highlight that rhythm processing, the function of temporal prediction, motor programming and execution, is an important shared mechanism underlying the treatment of non-fluent aphasia with music therapy. In support of this, we conduct a literature review on the music therapy treating aphasia.