Search

We are getting smarter, and as a result the world is becoming a more peaceful place, says Steven Pinker.

Does our ability to talk lie in our genes? The suspicion is bolstered by the discovery of a gene that might affect how the brain circuitry needed for speech and language develops.

There are no fossils to show how language evolved. But evolutionary game theory is revealing how some of the defining features of human language could have been shaped by natural selection.

Plenty of reaction to the Commentary from transgendered scientist Ben A. Barres in Nature of 13 July. He debunked the claim that differences in innate aptitude, rather than discrimination, were behind the failure of many women to advance in scientific careers. There's more reaction in Correspondence this week. Add your views to the news blog on http://tinyurl.com/kacrg .

A new study of neurological patients who can analyse regular past-tense forms of verbs but not irregular ones, or vice versa, suggests that the mental dictionary and the mental grammar may be kept in different parts of the brain.