Great apes and humans all laugh with a steady, even rhythm, and a new study finds it has barely changed in 15 million years.

In fact, when they were tickled, laughter from both apes and humans was isochronous, meaning that the laughs followed a ...

Language is one of the few faculties that still seems to be uniquely human. Other animals, like chimpanzees and songbirds, have developed elaborate communication systems, but none appears to convey ...

Humans are the only species known to use fully symbolic language: a system capable of expressing abstract ideas, imaginary worlds and endless combinations of meaning. But how did we get there? The ...

What makes the human brain distinctive? A new study published in Cell identifies two genes linked to human brain features and provides a road map to discover many more. The research could lead to ...

Humans' unique language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago, according to a survey of genomic evidence. As such, language might have entered social use 100,000 years ago. It is a deep ...

Language has long been considered a uniquely human trait, with features that mark it out as distinct from the communication of all other species. However, research published in Science has uncovered ...

Geneticists have narrowed down the root of human language evolution after splicing our genes into mice to enhance their learning abilities. In the first study to investigate the cognitive effects of ...

The origins of human language remain mysterious. Are we the only animals truly capable of complex speech? Are Homo sapiens the only hominids who could give detailed directions to a far-off freshwater ...