Commentary: Cultural recycling of neural substrates during language evolution and development

Short title: Language from cultural recycling of neural substrates Abstract Cultural evolution has emerged as a key source of explanation for the emergence of complex linguistic structure in the human lineage. In this chapter, we argue that the cultural evolution of language has been shaped by non-linguistic constraints deriving from the human brain. By analogy to reading, novel cortical networks for acquiring and using language are suggested to have emerged through the cultural recycling of pre-existing neural substrates. These language networks inherited the structural properties and limitations of their component cortical circuits. In support for this perspective on the neurobiology of language, we discuss evidence regarding the multi-function nature of Broca's area—often considered to be a canonical language region—and the distributed nature of lexicosemantic representations. We conclude by noting that more research is needed to explore how the cultural evolution perspective may provide new insights into the neurobiology of language.