Scientists find gene 'switch' linked to speech

Scientists have identified a gene that "switches on" our ability to talk, a landmark findings that may lead to treatments for possible speech conditions such as autism and schizophrenia.
Dr Daniel Geschwind, who led the research team at the University of California, at Los Angeles (UCLA), said the FOX2P gene "appears to act like a light switch, switching on the circuits in the brain associated with learning language".
He said the FOX2P gene had been associated with speech in the past and that people with a mutated or damaged version struggled with learning languages and how to talk.
"Our findings may shed light on why human brains are born with the circuitry for speech and language and chimp brains are not," said Geschwind, whose findings are reported in the science journal Nature.
They discovery was made by comparing versions of the FOX2P gene in humans and our near relative the chimpanzee to see why humans have the ability to speak and they have not.
The team at the American university discovered there were major differences between how the human and chimp versions of FOXP2 work, perhaps explaining why language is unique to humans, the Daily Telegraph said.
Dr Genevieve Konopka, the co-author of the study, said genetic changes between the human and chimp species hold the clues for how our brains developed their capacity for language.
"By pinpointing the genes influenced by FOXP2, we have identified a new set of tools for studying how human speech could be regulated at the molecular level," he was quoted as saying by the British daily.