Svante Pääbo is a Swedish geneticist specialising in the field of evolutionary genetics. As one of the founders of paleogenetics, he has worked extensively on the neanderthal genome. Since 1997, he has been director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Forkhead box protein P2 (FOXP2) is a protein that, in humans, is encoded by the FOXP2 gene. FOXP2 is a member of the forkhead box family of transcription factors, proteins that regulate gene expression by binding to DNA. It is expressed in the brain, heart, lungs and digestive system.
Expressive language disorder is a communication disorder in which there are difficulties with verbal and written expression. It is a specific language impairment characterized by an ability to use expressive spoken language that is markedly below the appropriate level for the mental age, but with a language comprehension that is within normal limits. There can be problems with vocabulary, producing complex sentences, and remembering words, and there may or may not be abnormalities in articulation.
Specific language impairment (SLI) is diagnosed when a child's language does not develop normally and the difficulties cannot be accounted for by generally slow development, physical abnormality of the speech apparatus, autism spectrum disorder, apraxia, acquired brain damage or hearing loss. Twin studies have shown that it is under genetic influence. Although language impairment can result from a single-gene mutation, this is unusual. More commonly SLI results from the combined influence of multiple genetic variants, each of which is found in the general population, as well as environmental influences.
Dame Kay Elizabeth Davies is a British geneticist. She is Dr Lee's Professor of Anatomy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. She is director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) functional genetics unit, a governor of the Wellcome Trust, a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function, and a patron and Senior Member of Oxford University Scientific Society. Her research group has an international reputation for work on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). In the 1980s, she developed a test which allowed for the screening of foetuses whose mothers have a high risk of carrying DMD.
The KE family is a medical name designated for a British family, about half of whom exhibit a severe speech disorder called developmental verbal dyspraxia. It is the first family with speech disorder to be investigated using genetic analyses, by which the speech impairment is discovered to be due to genetic mutation, and from which the gene FOXP2, often dubbed the "language gene", was discovered. Their condition is also the first human speech and language disorder known to exhibit strict Mendelian inheritance.
The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics is a research institute situated on the campus of Radboud University Nijmegen located in Nijmegen, Gelderland, the Netherlands. The institute was founded in 1980 by Pim Levelt, and is particular for being entirely dedicated to psycholinguistics, and is also one of the few institutes of the Max Planck Society to be located outside Germany. The Nijmegen-based institute currently occupies 5th position in the Ranking Web of World Research Centers among all Max Planck institutes. It currently employs about 235 people.
Forkhead box protein P1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the FOXP1 gene. FOXP1 is necessary for the proper development of the brain, heart, and lung in mammals. It is a member of the large FOX family of transcription factors.
Contactin-associated protein-like 2 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the CNTNAP2 gene. Since the most recent reference human genome GRCh38, CNTNAP2 is the longest gene in the human genome
Homeobox protein OTX1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the OTX1 gene.
Dyslexia-associated protein KIAA0319 is a protein which in humans is encoded by the KIAA0319 gene.
Myrna Lee Gopnik is a Canadian linguist. She is a Professor Emerita of Linguistics at McGill University. She is known for her research on the KE family, an English family with several members affected by specific language impairment.
Angela Friederici is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and is an internationally recognized expert in neuropsychology and linguistics. She is the author of over 400 academic articles and book chapters, and has edited 15 books on linguistics, neuroscience, language and psychology.
Evolutionary psychology of language is the study of the evolutionary history of language as a psychological faculty within the discipline of evolutionary psychology. It makes the assumption that language is the result of a Darwinian adaptation.
Developmental verbal dyspraxia (DVD), also known as childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) and developmental apraxia of speech (DAS), is a condition in which children have problems saying sounds, syllables and words. This is not because of muscle weakness or paralysis. The brain has problems planning to move the body parts needed for speech. The child knows what they want to say, but their brain has difficulty coordinating the muscle movements necessary to say those words.
Rajesh Vasantlal Thakker is May Professor of Medicine in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford. Thakker is also a Consultant physician at the Churchill Hospital and the John Radcliffe Hospital, Principal investigator (PI) at the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism (OCDEM) and was Chairman of the NIHR/MRC Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) Board until Spring 2016.
Faraneh Vargha-Khadem is a British cognitive neuroscientist specializing in developmental amnesia among children. Faraneh was a part of the team that identified the FOXP2 gene, the so-called 'speech gene', that may explain why humans talk and chimps do not.
Silvia Paracchini FRSE is a geneticist who researches the contribution of genetic variation to neurodevelopmental traits such as dyslexia and human handedness.
Kathryn Emma Watkins is an experimental psychologist in the Wellcome Trust centre for integrative neuroimaging at the University of Oxford and a tutorial fellow at St Anne's College, Oxford. Her research investigates the brain processes that underlie speech, language and development.
Sonja Catherine Vernes is a Dutch neuroscientist and Head of the Neurogenetics of Vocal Communication Research Group at the University of St Andrews. She holds a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) future leaders fellowship. Her research investigates vocal communication between mammals. She was a laureate for the 2022 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists.
