Speech, Language, and the FOXP2 gene

The FOXP2 gene was initially focused on after studies of a British family in London who had an especially high family history of speech and language disorders found that in many affected family members, one of their two copies of FOXP2 had been inactivated by a mutation.

Scientists continue to work at understanding the effects of FOXP2 on brain development.

Studies have suggested that virtually every human in the world has the same allele of FOXP2, suggesting that it may have conferred a major survival value and swept through the population within the last 200,000 years. It has been speculated that this spread of FOXP2 lead to neurological changes that could have accounted for the major change in human behavior 50,000 year ago that lead Homo sapiens populations to expand and move out of Africa, with the emergence of improved language abilities being a likely candidate.

A recent report that FOXP2 had been found in analysis of Neanderthal DNA has further fueled debates about the origins of language and the role of FOXP2. Neanderthals and modern humans lineages diverged approximately 350,000 years ago. They dominated Europe until the arrival of modern humans about 45,000 years ago. Many believe they were likely driven to extinction by modern humans approximately 30,000 years ago from their last refuges in Spain and Portugal.