During the 2016 presidential campaign, immigration became a major national issue. President Trump's executive order that places travel restrictions on citizens and refugees from six predominantly Muslim countries and that bans their entrance into the United States has resulted in nationwide protests and questions regarding the constitutionality of…

We first review the mirror-system hypothesis on the evolution of the language-ready brain, stressing the important role of imitation and protosign in providing the scaffolding for protospeech. We then assess the role of social interaction and non-specific knowledge of language in the emergence of new sign languages in deaf communities (focusing on…