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    Curiouser and curiouser.

    can't cut or paste, on this poxy computer, but a suspiciously welsh sounding englishman called alun morgan, has woken up after a stroke speaking fluent welsh. he was evacuated there during the second world war, but claims to have never picked up the language.

    aphasia is a very strange thing indeed.

    #2
    Curiouser and curiouser.

    Telegraph report & video
    here

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      #3
      Curiouser and curiouser.

      This is an extreme example of phenomenon that's actually fairly common. When La Signora was recovering from her stroke there was a Polish patient in the same hospital. On recovering consciousness he'd lost all his native language but his English, which previously had been no better than adequate, was greatly improved. The human brain is an amazing place, if only we had ready access to all it knows.

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        #4
        Curiouser and curiouser.

        yes, but the way that we find out about these things is terrible. I remember really struggling to read "the man who mistook his wife for a hat" in college, in large part because it was so fucking terrifying. The human brain is so amazing, er, and desperately desperately fragile.

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          #5
          Curiouser and curiouser.

          True enough, it's a bowl of jelly inside an eggshell, and we can fuck it up internally in a thousand ways too. But it's capacity to repair itself makes it more resilient than was once believed. The brain's ability to rebuild/repair neurological pathways, for instance, is jaw-dropping, but our knowledge of how it does so is presently at kindergarten level. When we start to get a real grip on it we'll fly (not literally, obviously.)

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            #6
            Curiouser and curiouser.

            You need to get a grip on two things, Amor: the possessive 'its' and your PMs.

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              #7
              Curiouser and curiouser.

              I think it was a great-aunt who was in a loony bin with a woman who had ECT and lost all her French.

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                #8
                Curiouser and curiouser.

                The mother of one of Mrs. Inca's high school classmates had something similar, where she began speaking Spanish fluently after not having used it since high school. She had some awful brain condition and she died not long after that.

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                  #9
                  Curiouser and curiouser.

                  The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: yes, but the way that we find out about these things is terrible. I remember really struggling to read "the man who mistook his wife for a hat" in college, in large part because it was so fucking terrifying. The human brain is so amazing, er, and desperately desperately fragile.
                  Oh good lord yes. I've an uncle who occasionally sends me a book of his [Sacks, not uncle] and they're utterly horrifying, particularly (in my case) the music one. I DO NOT want to be reminded that my brain is made of meat, thank you.

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                    #10
                    Curiouser and curiouser.

                    WOM wrote: You need to get a grip on two things, Amor: the possessive 'its' and your PMs.
                    Answered, finally.

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                      #11
                      Curiouser and curiouser.

                      I didn't realise this was a national story, just thought it was Bath local news. Something sounds suspicious about this local report

                      His wife Yvonne was the only person who could understand him and had to translate for doctors.
                      So his wife appears to speak Welsh? Perhaps the link isn't that mysterious.

                      I know only too well how frighteningly powerful and uncontrollable one's brain is but I have always been fascinated by the story of my Hungarian father in law who had a stroke and was only able to communicate in Hungarian, which is a pain in 1970s Hereford. Not as mysterious as Mr Morgan but what I did find interesting was that he said he was thinking in English but it only came out in Hungarian.

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                        #12
                        Curiouser and curiouser.

                        Amor de Cosmos wrote: This is an extreme example of phenomenon that's actually fairly common. When La Signora was recovering from her stroke there was a Polish patient in the same hospital. On recovering consciousness he'd lost all his native language but his English, which previously had been no better than adequate, was greatly improved. The human brain is an amazing place, if only we had ready access to all it knows.
                        Christ, no!
                        The weapons of war would just be more effective.

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                          #13
                          Curiouser and curiouser.

                          alyxandr wrote:
                          Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!
                          yes, but the way that we find out about these things is terrible. I remember really struggling to read "the man who mistook his wife for a hat" in college, in large part because it was so fucking terrifying. The human brain is so amazing, er, and desperately desperately fragile.
                          Oh good lord yes. I've an uncle who occasionally sends me a book of his [Sacks, not uncle] and they're utterly horrifying, particularly (in my case) the music one. I DO NOT want to be reminded that my brain is made of meat, thank you.
                          Funny, my response to reading a lot of Sacks' stuff is that I'd like to know what it's like to experience it (providing it was an on/off switch type situation).

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                            #14
                            Curiouser and curiouser.

                            but the problem with the sacks stories is that the lack of a switch is the terrifying thing.

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