Brain regions where spoken or written words are decoded are also important in interpreting wordless gestures, research funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders has found.

The findings suggest that these brain regions may play a much broader role in the interpretation of symbols than researchers have thought, so they could be the evolutionary starting point from which language originated.

These regions include the inferior frontal gyrus, or Broca’s area, in the front left side of the brain, and the posterior temporal region, commonly referred to as Wernicke’s area, toward the back left side of the brain.