Dear members of the ILCB community,

For decades, it has been widely accepted that language is uniquely human, a defining feature that sets our species apart from other animals. Yet recent advances in artificial intelligence, and in particular the emergence of large language models, invite us to revisit this long-standing assumption. For the first time, we are interacting with artificial, non-human agents that can understand and produce language at a level strikingly comparable to our own. Does this development invite us to reconsider Chomsky’s famous claim that “language is unique to man”? And what does it truly mean to communicate?

The biological roots of language in humans and non-human primates have long been a key topic at the ILCB. More recently, this perspective has been extended to the study of animal communication beyond primates — notably in whales, where unique multimodal recordings combined with artificial intelligence are revealing a rich and structured communicative repertoire.

It is therefore particularly fitting that our next ILCB scientific workshop, organized by the ILCB doc&postdoc group, under the leadership of Elin Runnqvist, will be dedicated to these issues: Communicating Minds: Humans, Machines, and Other Animals. The workshop will bring together researchers working at the intersection of language, cognition, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and animal communication. The workshop will take place on March 20th in Marseille. I strongly encourage you to save the date and register as soon as possible.

Finally, as we are currently preparing the 2025 annual report, I kindly remind you to check the acknowledgment sections of your scientific productions and to tag in HAL those that have benefited from the ILCB environment or funding.

Best wishes,

Johannes

"A central theme in the study of neural systems is to examine how macroscopic functions and behaviors arise from fine-scale interactions between neural elements. This perspective aligns well with the framework of statistical physics, which studies the macroscopic behavior of large ensembles of interacting microscopic entities. […]

While information at small scales (such as neuron properties) influences larger-scale phenomena (such as overall network function), large-scale processes can also feed back to smaller scales. For example, neural systems exhibit plasticity, wherein behavior or brain activity at the network level can reshape connections between neurons. […]

Recognizing such feedback loops is important as we build a multiscale picture of the brain."

Kulkarni, S., & Bassett, D. S. (2025).
Toward Principles of Brain Network Organization and Function.
Annual Review of Biophysics, 54, 353–378. 

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