alt Hacker NewsThis maps with experience taking the anti-seizure medication Topamax in college.
I trialed for a month it as an off-label migraine preventative on recommendation from my neurologist.
Topamax can dampen neuronal activity in the language area of the brain for some people.
It was a terrifying experience, but it was also a valuable one as it changed the way I view intelligence.
About 10 days in, my writing and speech skills had devolved to that of a primary school aged child. I tried to type a text message and struggled to come up with simple words like “and”. My speech slowed down considerably.
The terrifying thing was that my internal world was still as complex and meaningful as it was before. All of the emotions I felt were real and legitimate. My cognition outside of language was intact, I could do math just fine and conceptualize and abstract problems.
In spite of this, I was unable to convey what I was feeling and thinking to the outside world. It felt like I was trapped inside my own body.
After recovering, my intuitive understanding of the link between language and intelligence was changed forever.
See the following for more info on Topamax/Topiramate language impairment: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10072-008-0906-5
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Did you write more about that experience somewhere?
This seems to corroborate my feeling that aptitude with language is a very poor proxy for intelligence, although it's often used as one. My own experience is that I'm less struggling to find the right words and sounds more clever at the times when my brain is actually empty and I'm "not there", and at the contrary the more "self-aware" I am and the more I struggle to articulate my thoughts, as if my brain (or ego?) was stepping in the way and slowing me down by trying to supervise what I'm saying too closely, making me sounds dumb.
Was your understanding of language also impaired?
Scary, but cool!
To clarify "cognition outside of language" and "unable to convey"... did it purely affect external communication? Were you able to think "in language"? Do you tend to rely on thinking "in language" (whether inner monologue, describing problems like drafting prose, or otherwise)?