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Brain Region Discovered That Only Processes Spoken, Not Written Words

posted by mrpg on Monday April 01 2019, @11:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the I'm-speaking-not-writing dept.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Brain region discovered that only processes spoken, not written words: Study of rare dementia shows selective attack on areas of brain

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.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @05:12AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @05:12AM (#823459)

    Mark Twain was famous for being one of the the first writer if not the very first to negotiate his own copyrights and to trademark all sorts of idioms he made up so when authors used them he'll be able to claim royalties.

    To that end he wrote against all manners of reforms during his journalist career. It's why he's so wildly popular with school programs. With the exception of his defense of African Americans, he was one of the most conservative writers of his day but managed to present himself as a progressive thinker by taking a few left-wing stances with regards to labor and civil rights. e.g. One of his fictions has an American going back in time to King Arthur's court and fucking everything up trying to introduce progressive ideas and technologies to their society. That's to say, his core belief was conservative rather than progressive. He only had a few progressive thoughts because he was working and living in a certain environment.

    Basically he was what we call today a California Republican: A person growing up in a very liberal coastal city but with a relatively traditional mindset. So, they give the impression of being progressive because they're advocating agendas that the rest of the nation considered modern. But in fact they're just maintaining their own way of life and have no desire to improve on anything beyond their familiar experience.

    A true American.