Primal emotions and cultural evolution of language:
Primal affects empower words
Biological evidence for evolved-adaptive (genetically-selected) modularity for
human brain language processing is almost nonexistent. The historical emergence
of human brain language capacity may wholly reflect socio-cultural learning,
permitted by evolved cortical expansions and motivated by bottom-up affective
states. Abundant evidence supports the existence of many genetically encoded
primary-process emotional systems in deep subcortical brain regions that govern
wide-ranging attentional and motivational states that guide the emergence of
diverse cognitive processes including language. The fundamental affective states of
the brain impact secondary-process learning and memory mechanisms through
various affectively rich basal-ganglia of the brain. Once language is acquired
culturally, emotional states continue to control tertiary-process cognitive elaborations
of thinking and language processing, operating through recently evolved
neocortical expansions, some unique to humans, which have no more intrinsic
capacity for consciousness in humans than in other animals.
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Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
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