His report, based on vocabulary and grammar tests conducted with people who had suffered brain damage that blocked one or the other type of memory, appears in the March Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Pinker is a coauthor. Although Ullman accepts Pinker's notion of a language instinct, he acknowledges that the new evidence is more consistent with the theory that wide-ranging brain systems foster linguistic skills. Both Ullman and Pinker theorize that a language instinct incorporates some brain structures devoted to broad capacities, such as memory, and others that make unique contributions to the use of grammar and words. Whatever the case, Smolensky views the future of language studies with optimism.
Fertile ground exists for future research.