Human-specific increase of dopaminergic innervation in a striatal region associated with speech and language: A comparative analysis of the primate basal ganglia

ABSTRACT The dopaminergic innervation of the striatum has been implicated in learning processes and in the development of human speech and language. Several lines of evidence suggest that evolutionary changes in dopaminergic afferents of the striatum may be associated with uniquely human cognitive and behavioral abilities, including the association of the human‐specific sequence of the FOXP2 gene with decreased dopamine in the dorsomedial striatum of mice. To examine this possibility, we quantified the density of tyrosine hydroxylase‐immunoreactive axons as a measure of dopaminergic innervation within five basal ganglia regions in humans, great apes, and New and Old World monkeys. Our results indicate that humans differ from nonhuman primate species in having a significant increase in dopaminergic innervation selectively localized to the medial caudate nucleus. This region of the striatum is highly interconnected, receiving afferents from multiple neocortical regions, and supports behavioral and cognitive flexibility. The medial caudate nucleus also shows hyperactivity in humans lacking a functional FOXP2 allele and exhibits altered dopamine concentrations in humanized Foxp2 mice. Additionally, striatal dopaminergic input was not altered in chimpanzees that used socially learned attention‐getting sounds versus those that did not. This evidence indicates that the increase in dopamine innervation of the medial caudate nucleus in humans is a species‐typical characteristic not associated with experience‐dependent plasticity. The specificity of this increase may be related to the degree of convergence from cortical areas within this region of the striatum and may also be involved in human speech and language. J. Comp. Neurol. 524:2117–2129, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Humans are unique among primates in having increased dopaminergic innervation of the medial caudate nucleus, a region that is highly interconnected with the neocortex and that has been implicated in speech and language production. The results of the present study indicate that striatal dopamine has played an important role in the evolution of the human brain.