What can't Mother Goose do?

File this under neat things I don't know much about. Here's the background for the excerpt below. Scott 'aren't you the Dilbert dude?' Adams suffered from Spasmodic Dysphonia, a rare neural condition in which speech is impaired because (the hypothesis goes) the part of the brain responsible for controlling speech shuts down, with the result that attempts at speech misfire, causing spasms of the vocal chords. The really odd thing about the condition is that those affected can still use their voices for things other than speech. For example, Adams retained his public speaking voice and, like many who suffer from the condition, was able to sing.

Got it? Ok, now check this out:

My theory was that the part of my brain responsible for normal speech was still intact, but for some reason had become disconnected from the neural pathways to my vocal cords. (That’s consistent with any expert’s best guess of what’s happening with Spasmodic Dysphonia. It’s somewhat mysterious.) And so I reasoned that there was some way to remap that connection. 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. But I’m no brain surgeon.

The day before yesterday, while helping on a homework assignment, I noticed I could speak perfectly in rhyme. Rhyme was a context I hadn’t considered. A poem isn’t singing and it isn’t regular talking. But for some reason the context is just different enough from normal speech that my brain handled it fine.

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.
Jack jumped over the candlestick.

I repeated it dozens of times, partly because I could. It was effortless, even though it was similar to regular speech. I enjoyed repeating it, hearing the sound of my own voice working almost flawlessly. I longed for that sound, and the memory of normal speech. Perhaps the rhyme took me back to my own childhood too. Or maybe it’s just plain catchy. I enjoyed repeating it more than I should have. Then something happened.

My brain remapped.

My speech returned.

Not 100%, but close, like a car starting up on a cold winter night. And so I talked that night. A lot. And all the next day. A few times I felt my voice slipping away, so I repeated the nursery rhyme and tuned it back in. By the following night my voice was almost completely normal. |The Dilbert Blog|

Did I mention that the condition is supposed to be permanent?

I don't really know what to say about the notion of 'remapping', and I suppose that misdiagnosis is always a possibility, but I have to say that Adams' plan of therapy makes a lot of sense. I guess the lesson here is that everyone benefits when engineers get sick.