brain

Stuttering John’s Lost Language

In the 10th century, an envoy named John of Gorze adopted a radical language-learning strategy: two years of total silence…

6 days ago

The Forbidden Experiment: Feral Children

From an Egyptian pharaoh to a Holy Roman Emperor, history is dotted with cruel attempts to discover humanity's "natural" language…

6 days ago

Language and Spatial Cognition

Your native language does more than just give you words for "left" and "right"; its very grammar shapes how you…

6 days ago

Syntactic Priming: The Echo

Ever found yourself accidentally copying the sentence structure of the person you're talking to? This isn't a coincidence; it's a…

6 days ago

Reading Without Breaks: The Cognitive Cost of Scriptio Continua

Ancient scripts were often written as an unbroken stream of letters, a practice known as scriptio continua. This placed an…

1 month ago

The Physics of the Tongue: A Muscular Hydrostat

Your tongue performs incredible feats of precision for speech, all without a single bone. Discover the fascinating science of the…

1 month ago

The ‘Gavagai’ Problem: How We Map Words to Reality

Imagine a speaker in a new language points to a rabbit and says "gavagai." How do you know if it…

1 month ago

The Semiotics of a Warning Siren

Ever wonder why a rising and falling wail universally signals an emergency? This post breaks down the semiotics of warning…

1 month ago

Linguistic Exaptation Explained

Did you know that your brain never evolved to read? Instead, it brilliantly repurposed areas meant for object recognition to…

1 month ago

Auditory Masking in the City

Ever wondered why a distant siren can slice through city noise, but you can't hear a friend talking right beside…

1 month ago

This website uses cookies.