Tone of Voice and Mind : The Connections between Intonation ...

Chapter 1
Cerebral specialization
Synopsis
Three behaviors most clearly distinguish human beings from other animal
species – language, tool-use and music – and all three involve functional
asymmetry of the cerebral hemispheres. It is argued that a proper
understanding of the human psyche requires, above all else, clarification of
the complementary specializations of the left and right cerebral cortices when
people are engaged in these activities.
A. Characteristically-human behaviors
Ask an anthropologist what is unusual about Homo sapiens, and you will inevitably
be told something about language and tools. Other topics will arise
and the researcher’s current obsession and grant applications will creep into
the discussion, but central to any consideration of what it means to be a human
being will be those two issues: the communication between people using language
and the manipulation of the environment using tools. Neither language
nor tool-making (and tool-usage) is totally unprecedented in the animal kingdom,
but the human capacity for inventing and using words and tools is truly
extraordinary. Hints and traces can be found in other species, but the complexity
of language and tool phenomena in human hands is not a percentage
increase over chimpanzee or dolphin capabilities, but a quantum leap. Quantify
it as you will, we human beings spend a phenomenal amount of time and
energy with our fancy words and fancy machines and, as a consequence, have
developed over the course of thousands of years language systems and material
artifacts of astounding complexity. While we share a large number of biological
traits, behaviors and instincts with other species near and far, the similarities
between our uses of language and tools and those of other species are weak.
They are so weak, in fact, that, as recently as 150 years ago, many educated
and truly intelligent people (many of whom handled higher-level mathematics
with greater ease, knew more foreign languages, had more developed musical
talents, wider philosophical knowledge, and firmer moral and ethical fiber
than the typical University Don today!) vociferously denied any evolutionary
link with monkeys, much less mice or cockroaches. They were not stupid peo-