disturb activity-dependent circuit selection during further development.” Syn-
chronization, then, is not only relevant during normal performance, it is equally
important in the context of the initial setting up of the network that will even-
tually perform the relevant tasks. In both cases, the centrality of the thalamus
cannot be ignored. (Although we will not have the opportunity to expand on
this here, for lack of space, it may be worth mentioning that the centrality of
the thalamus finds its clearest expression in its self-sustained oscillatory mecha-
nism during sleep-mode and sleep-wake regulation. Alterations in sleep-wake
patterns and the homeostatic function of the thalamus is known to impact
learning, memory, and cognition generally (Brown et al. 2012).)
6 Conclusion
This article began with a plea to take subcor tical structures into account in an
attempt to offer an adequate neurobiological account of the human language
faculty and its contribution to species-specific cognitive traits. In doing so, we
have added ourselves to the list of authors who suggest that “the focus on the
neocortex as the principle area of change in primate brain evolution might have
been excessive, and that some attention should now be paid to cortico-
[subcortical] circuits and the behavioural functions they may mediate” (Whiting
and Barton 2003). As Finlay et al. (2001) write in an evolutionary cont ext,
“there is no reason to p resume selection pressures for cortically based functions
drove brain expansion at all.... [T]he brain grows as a covarying whole,
increasing in size according to a fairly straightforward log function. It is just as
likely, therefore, that pressures for enhanced archicortical, corticoid, or subcorti-
cal processing could have triggered the adjustment of global timing constraints
that led, incidentally, to much bigger isocortices.”
To correct for the classical view that cognition is the exclusive domain of the
cortex, we have exploited the literature on the thalamus. Numerous authors
(e.g., Carrera and Bogousslavsky (2006)) have already pointed out that thalamic
damage can mimic all cortical syndromes, suggesting that a focus on the thala-
mus may be a productive alternative to the classical view. In addition, as Theyel
et al. (2010) remark, “much of the information transfer between cortical areas
involves cortico-thalamo-cortical circuits,... cortico-thalamo-cortical informa-
tion transfer may [then] represent an important addition to, or even replacement
of, the current dogma that corticocortical transfer of primary information
exclusively involves direct corticocortical pathways”. Our overall conclusion from
our survey of the literature agrees with Saalmann and Kastner (2011), when
they say: “Only with detailed knowledge of th alamic processing and thalamo-
cortical interactions will it be possible to fully understand cognition.”
In addition to correcting for the cortical bias, we have insisted on the need
to go beyond inappropriately modular perspective on language and its neural
implementation. As Treves (2009) nicely puts it, “understanding the neural
basis of higher cogniti ve functions such as those involved in language requires
in fact a shift from a localization approach to an analysis of network operation”.
This is slowly becoming the consensus view. One-to-one brain-behavior
244 Constantina Theofanopoulou and Cedric Boeckx