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Mind the gap
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« What rhymes with Mayo? | Main | Revelations about Aptheker » Friday, October 27, 2006Remapping your brainI'm not sure I have much to add here, but this is just a remarkable story. It happens to be a first-person account by the creator and author of the beloved Dilbert comic strip, Scott Adams. But it has nothing to do with the strip. Adams lost his voice 18 months ago, apparently for good. He was diagnosed with a rare condition affecting the vocal cords called Spasmodic Dysphonia. Strangely, he found that he could sing and speak in certain contexts. He tried an experiment: All I needed to do was find the type of speaking or context most similar -- but still different enough -- from normal speech that still worked. Once I could speak in that slightly different context, I would continue to close the gap between the different-context speech and normal speech until my neural pathways remapped. Well, that was my theory. And it worked. Hat tip to Ezra Klein. Posted by Evan Hughes at 12:12 PM
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