Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Even though these patients could hear and speak perfectly fine, a disease had crept into a portion of their brain that kept them from processing auditory words while still allowing them to process visual ones. Patients in the study had primary progressive aphasia (PPA), a rare type of dementia that destroys language and currently has no treatment.
The study, published March 21 in the journal Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, allowed the scientists to identify a previously little-studied area in the left brain that seems specialized to process auditory words.
If a patient in the study saw the word "hippopotamus" written on a piece of paper, they could identify a hippopotamus in flashcards. But when that patient heard someone say "hippopotamus," they could not point to the picture of the animal.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 01 2019, @07:02PM
I suppose that as we transition to using only the Unicode Emoji characters for messages and replies, the pronunciation problems will disappear within a generation.
People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.