Benign tumors involving the hypoglossal nerve and canal include large glomus jugulare neoplasms.

[3] Studies of the hypoglossal canal revolve around the development of safe drilling techniques to conduct surgery on that area of the brain.

Researchers have found that hominids who lived as long as 2 million years ago had the same size canal as that of modern-day chimpanzees; some scientists thus assume they were incapable of speech.

However, archaic Homo sapiens 400,000 years ago had the same size canal as that of modern humans, meaning they could have been capable of speech.

However recent studies involving several primate species have failed to find conclusive evidence of a relationship between its size and speech.