Does it link words to pictures in your mind? So there is a mapping from the word “owl” to a picture of an owl in your head?
Can I also add that I don’t think this mapping involves word definitions, so for example the word owl won’t map to the word definition of an owl since you need to define words in the definition itself. This causes a never ending chain as you keep having to define words in further definitions.
In: Other
Google more about the first part of my name. It is a technique where you control how information is linked. It should give you a better idea how our brain naturally does it, if you are the one driving for a while so to speak.
“What the heck is a brain store and what is it doing with my words? Oh. Store like… Storing… In MY brain. As in… Vocabulary.”
For some of us, it’s a little slow at retrieving all the meanings and linking things together in context
I am helping a woman recouperate from a stroke that really hammered her language area (so she has Aphasia)…. and it is fascinating how her brain works I can see how it finds old memories and can’t form new ones and where connections are or are not made.
I don’t think it necessarily links a world to a picture. It would be interesting to try to understand how people born blind actually think
Think of it as if the word “owl” (or whatever word you choose) evokes an image in your conscience through, as you say, mapping (neurons talking to each other).
But it is not that simple. The same word can evoke different images depending on your situation, and obviusly depending on the person. For example if I say home you might evoke your home, but I will evoke mine.
Moreover, if you live in a flat for example, you may evoke your flat or your parents’ house.
About the definition… It is very uncommon that the brain evokes a definition without you purposely wanting to do so, because you have to search (literally, you search in your storage of info) the words to describe it, so it is less efficient and more conscience-driven.
Hope it helps!
You gotta think of your brain like a file cabinet that stores all the words you know and has files on the things that a make a word have a meaning. This includes relationships between words/ideas, sensory info, similar words or things, sounds, usages, and all that. Then there’s pathways that form between what you hear/see and where the file is stored in the mind. The word owl would definitely map to the definition of an owl (big, nocturnal, hunter, wise, feathery, bird, bitey, 360 head spin) unless you didn’t know what an owl was, in which case you’d maybe try and figure out if an owl if something that sounds like the word ‘owl’, find a word that sounds similar and maybe come up with a wrong definition and start to build inaccurate files on it.
I don’t know if this is allowed, but the non ELI5 word for this is psycholinguistic processing and it relates to the way words are stored and retrieved in the mind.
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