Introduction

Psychopathological symptoms in schizophrenia are mainly characterized by thought and language disorders, which are deeply intertwined. This book addresses the issue of the complex link between psychopathology, language and evolution at different levels of analysis. The book is structured in three major sections. The first part, dedicated to the issue of the interplay between brain evolution and the origins of language, is opened by the chapter by Philip Lieberman on genes and the evolution of language. The author warns from looking at the neural correlates of language from a naïve localizationist perspective. Rather, language processing is subserved by a complex set of neural networks linking activity in different parts of the brain. The author then focuses on the similarities between human and non-human primate neural networks and cortical structures. Finally, the attention is shifted on the role potentially played by the FOXP2human gene and other genes that appear to be candidates for conferring the linguistic, cognitive and motor capacities that distinguish humans from other living species. In Chapter 2, Francesco Ferretti explores the intriguing issue of a potential interconnection between navigation, discourse and the origin of language. Namely, the chapter explores the hypothesis that language processing is deeply connected to the ability to navigate and that, as such, its origins can be explained when considering that human communication took advantage of the spatial navigation processing systems capable of interpreting the limited set of signals in terms of appropriateness. The fascinating issue of language phylogenesis is further explored by Franco Fabbro and Massimo Bergamasco in their third chapter. Here, the authors discuss the phylogenetic aspects of world-and self-representation in humans focusing on the cognitive and anatomo-functional correlates of the narrative self and its connections with the neural networks underpinning language, episodic memory and mental mind travel.