REVEALED: THE POSSIBLE ORIGIN OF HUMAN SPEECH

NEW YORK: Scientists have shed new light on the underpinnings of human speech by identifying neural circuits in the brains of monkeys, which they say could represent a common evolutionary origin of social communication.

According to a study published in the journal Neuron, these circuits are involved in face recognition, facial expression, and emotion. And they may very well have given rise to our singular capacity for speech.

Working with rhesus macaque monkeys, the researchers from Rockefeller University in the US had previously identified neural networks responsible for recognising faces - networks that closely resemble ones found in the human brain.

In the latest study, Winrich Freiwald and colleagues investigated the patterns of activation that occur within and between various networks to better understand how the brain coordinates the intricate task of social communication.

They used a novel experimental setup to take Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans of the brains of monkeys as they watched video clips of other monkeys making communicative facial expressions.

In some of the clips, the videotaped monkeys looked off to the side, mimicking a situation in which the subject monkeys were passively observing communication between other animals without participating in it.

In others, the prerecorded animals appeared to be looking directly at the subject monkeys, simulating face-to-face social interaction.

These differences in social context proved to be significant. When the monkeys in the clips made a friendly lipsmacking gesture, the subject monkeys responded in kind - but only when their prerecorded peers appeared to be making direct eye contact with them.

Based on previous research, the scientists expected the faceperception regions of the monkeys' brains to simply feed information to a region associated with emotion, which would then stimulate the regions responsible for producing facial expressions.

All of those areas were indeed activated. However, much to the researchers' surprise, they did not shuttle information to one another in straightforward, sequential fashion, researchers said.

Videos that simulated social interaction through direct eye contact caused an unexpected third neural circuit to light up, they said.

This suggests that specific areas of the animals' brains are sensitive to social context, and perform the specialised cognitive functions necessary for social communication.

Producing facial expressions in response to the videotaped monkeys prompted an entirely different pattern of brain activation.

Generating a friendly lipsmack, in particular, activated a region that resembles Broca's area, a portion of the human brain concerned with the production of speech, Freiwald said.

This suggests that monkey facial expressions like lipsmacks might be evolutionary precursors to human speech - a possibility that some scientists had previously discounted on the grounds that such gestures were too simple or reflexive to pave the way for something as subtle and sophisticated as human verbal communication, he said. RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazilians are up in arms over the ordeal of a black man jailed for more than a week in Rio because he was mistaken for a suspect who was also an Afro-brazilian with a shaven head.

"It does not change, and it will never change. Society is racist and it will always be," Antonio Carlos Rodrigues told local media when he was released from jail late Friday.

The story might seem a bit different in a less diverse society; but more than half of Brazilians are black or mixed race.

Police in Rio de Janeiro said they have opened an investigation "to establish the responsibilities" in this case.

The 43-year-old worker was arrested on July 13, accused of taking part in an armed robbery at the Venezuelan consulate.

To identify him, police compared video surveillance images from the consulate to photos the man had put on social networks.

In those images the suspect was wearing sunglasses.

According to a report published by the G1 site, the commissioner in charge of the investigation saw a resem- blance in "skin color, the shape of the nose and face", and highlighted certain features such as bald head and "large, pointed ears".

"It's a massive mistake, anyone can recognize the physical differences between the two," Rodrigues' brother told the G1 news site.

The family of the detainee carried out its own investigation and got other images from security cameras. It turned out the suspect who appears in the consulate video was already in prison.

He had been arrested a few days later for another assault with an armed weapon.

Police finally acknowledged their error and gave the order to free Rodrigues.

Many Brazilians have signed on to a social media campaign called #Somos todos Antonio Carlos (We are all Antonio Carlos).

Brazil was the last country in Latin America to end slavery in 1888, and even now, acts of institutional racism deepen social inequalities.

While most Brazilians are black or mixed race, for example, data show that only five per cent hold managerial positions. DHAKA: A religious procession organised by the minority Hindu community in Bangladesh was attacked by a group of people, leaving six devotees injured, police said.

The assailants struck when the Ulto Rath Yatra, or the reverse journey of Lord Jagannath's chariot, was being carried out on Sunday in Gopalganj district's Kotalipara upazila, bdnews24.com reported.

The report said that a group of locals attacked the Ratha Yatra, a major festival of the Hindu community.

The devotees, dressed as Lord Krishna and Radha, pulled the chariot in the procession organised by ISKCON from the Dhakeshwari National Temple to Swamibagh, the report said.

The accused entered the festival venue in Tarashi village with sticks and assaulted six devotees. They also vandalised the venue and looted gold ornaments from one of the devotees, the report said.

The festival committee filed a case accusing 10 to 15 people for the attack. Two accused were arrested, Kotalipara police station's Officer-in-charge Md Kamrul Faruk said, adding that efforts were underway to arrest others.