Why do we sometimes say a word or look at a word so many times that it sounds foreign/doesn’t look like a real word?

Question

I hope this makes sense

Like when you’re taking notes and you write a word and it just doesn’t seem spelled correctly no matter what or it just seems strange, or when you say a word and it feels weird coming out and you have difficulty comprehending that it’s an actual word.

In: Other

Answer 1

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation)

It’s called semantic satiation. I don’t think we know the real answer, but there are some ideas. One is that repeatedly activating whatever neural patterns represent a word causes the brain to inhibit that pattern. This could happen to the sound itself (the recognition of the sound of the word) OR the actual meaning of the word in the brain. But yeah, I don’t think we have conclusive answers.