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• Human communication evolved nonlinearly, with sudden phase transitions. • Biological preadaptations allowed the fast development of human language. • Human language and tool usage evolved simultaneously during a phase transition. • Evolutionary evidence indicates that communication has direct evolutionary effects. • Artificial Intelligence as a cognitive tool may expand future human communications. The brain capacity of human ancestors underwent two phase transitions, which were supported by preadaptations during the animal protolanguage period, resulting in the emergence of human language. The transitions were (1) the emergence of the primate cerebral cortex, with its unique characteristic of additional cortical areas together with size expansion, and (2) the replacement of natural selection as the main evolutionary mechanism by triadic niche construction , an interactive expansion of ecological-, neural-, and cognitive-niches. These phase transitions accelerated the expansion of the hominid brain, exceeding the neural capacity threshold required for the emergence of language. Extrapolating these developments enabled the researchers to predict a third phase transition, which may be induced by the current explosion of artificial intelligence, accelerating human cognitive capacities to the next threshold required for a novel mode of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] We examined hand use in the common marmosets using three experimental conditions. [•] Postures and size of apertures for reaching were manipulated in the conditions. [•] No lateralization in hand use was observed in any conditions at the group level. [•] Individual subjects changed their hand use depending on the conditions. [•] Posture was more influential than size of apertures for reaching on their hand use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article reviews some of the most representative studies in the animal literature pertaining to the processing of categorical and coordinate spatial relations and of their hemispheric control. Although the processing of coordinate and categorical cognition has been studied directly with nonhuman primates, experiments on cerebral asymmetries in avian spatial orientation are also reviewed. It turns out that Kosslyn''s model concerning the existence of two types of spatial representations each with a specific lateralization pattern has received some support in nonhuman primates and is only weakly verified in the avian studies. Procedural differences might explain some but certainly not all of the discrepancies between the human and the animal literature. It is especially the laterality hypothesis of a left hemisphere advantage in relational cognition and a right hemispheric superiority in judging absolute distances that is not supported by the animal data. Studies specifically addressing Kosslyn''s hypotheses and bearing on the use of similar stimuli, procedures and methods between the species tested are needed in order to lead to firm conclusions about the existence of coordinate versus categorical processing systems in animals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]