Video: Language’s variable role in autism

In a video interview, Simon Fisher discusses what language genes such as FOXP2 can reveal about the nature of autism.

By Virginia Hughes

15 October 2012 | 1 min read

This article is more than five years old.

Neuroscience—and science in general—is constantly evolving, so older articles may contain information or theories that have been reevaluated since their original publication date.

In the late 1990s, before the Human Genome Project had mapped out the precise locations of each gene, Simon Fisher found the first one ever linked to language: FOXP2.

Fisher’s team found it by analyzing the genes of members of one famous British family with a striking and specific language problem: Many of its members cannot properly coordinate parts of words, so their speech comes out garbled.

FOXP2 encodes a protein that turns other genes on and off. In 2008, Fisher and his colleagues showed that among FOXP2’s molecular targets is CNTNAP2, one of the first genes linked to autism.

Fisher, director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, recounted the FOXP2 story in a keynote lecture on Saturday evening at the 2012 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in New Orleans. On Sunday, in a video interview with SFARI.org, he elaborated on FOXP2’s link to autism.