This is terrific. As a speech therapist, any and all attention to articulators gets me excited - but this is supra-speech. No phonation (or little) as far as I can tell but what a work out of tongue, lips, jaw and vocal cords (at least the glottis). What masters of oral motor movements. Bravo!
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Wow! But how do they hear themselves over the sound of the MRI?
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Wow - was one word that came to mind but could not beatbox it.
Now, MRI shows movement - but how are these sounds themselves produced - do not the voice chirds come into play??
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I thought it relevant that this article appeared just below Zimmer (07 NOV 2018) on the electronic front page of the N.Y. Times. The coincidence is meaningful: the tongue and voice box of a beatboxer, shown here in the M.R.I. images, define exactly what was needed for ancient humans to speak in natural languages such as English or French. The other article defines exactly when early man switched from abstract art to figurative art: about 40,000 years ago. Many people, such as myself, believe that humans probably switched from symbolic communication (like grunts and sign language) to spoken languages at about the same time.
Since there are no audio recordings from that time, the only means of dating this change will be to examine the fossil records of Homo Sapiens. The M.R.I. images could provide clues on what to look for in these fossils.
Zimmer, Carl. In Cave in Borneo Jungle, Scientists Find Oldest Figurative Painting in the World. N.Y. Times, 07 NOV 2018. https://nyti.ms/2z5YcOz
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The brain was not studied?
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Fascinating article, perhaps there will be a performance at at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival one day
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just wow
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I'm not so knowledgeable about beatboxing, but I know about music. It wouldn't occur to me that beatboxing resembles language. So much of beatboxing is trying to discover new sounds, new ways of incorporating rhythm, new techniques - in other words, novelty. That's nearly the opposite of language whose sounds in which must be constrained so that it is recognized by many.
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