Any account of “what is special about the human brain”(Passingham 2008) must specify the
neural basis of our unique ability to produce speech and delineate how these remarkable …

The human capacity to synchronize movements to an auditory beat is central to musical
behaviour and to debates over the evolution of human musicality. Have humans evolved …

Music and dance are universal across human culture and have an ancient history. One
characteristic of music is its strong influence on movement. For example, an auditory beat …

A crucial, common feature of speech and music is that they show non-random structures
over time. It is an open question which of the other species share rhythmic abilities with …

We review evidence of non-verbal, embodied narratives in human infancy to better
understand their form and function as generators of common experience, regulation, and …

Birdsong is a prime example of acoustically sophisticated vocal behaviour, but its complexity
has evolved mainly through sexual selection to attract mates and repel sexual rivals. In …

Across a wide range of animal taxa, prosodic modulation of the voice can express emotional
information and is used to coordinate vocal interactions between multiple individuals. Within …

In the last decade, two hypotheses, one on the evolution of animal vocal communication in
general and the other on the origins of human language, have gained ground. The first …

Research on the evolution of human speech and phonology benefits from the comparative
approach: structural, spectral, and temporal features can be extracted and compared across …

In comparative studies of evolution of communication, the function and use of animal quiet
calls have typically been understudied, despite that these signals are presumably under …