Cool Thing Of The Day: Learning A Language While Comatose

April 17, 2010
File under: "No, I guess we still have no idea of the capacity or the capabilities of our brains." According to a Telegraph story, a 13 year old Croatian girl slipped into a coma, and came out of it a day later speaking fluent German. The girl, from the ...

File under: "No, I guess we still have no idea of the capacity or the capabilities of our brains."

According to a Telegraph story, a 13 year old Croatian girl slipped into a coma, and came out of it a day later speaking fluent German.

The girl, from the southern town of Knin, had only just started studying German at school and had been reading German books and watching German TV to become better, but was by no means fluent, according to her parents.

Since waking up from her 24 hour coma however, she has been unable to speak Croatian, but is able to communicate perfectly in German.

Some are calling it a miracle, and while I too am impressed by this remarkable event, I actually find it frustrating, as it makes me wonder -- she'd been studying German, so was she storing this latent language fluency in her brain somewhere, and it took a blow to the head to release it? And how can we surface the human brain's incredible capacity for storage, processing and recall without it taking a near-death experience?

Popular Sponsored Recommendations

Empowering the Modern Workforce: The Power of Connected Worker Technologies

March 1, 2024
Explore real-world strategies to boost worker safety, collaboration, training, and productivity in manufacturing. Emphasizing Industry 4.0, we'll discuss digitalization and automation...

3 Best Practices to Create a Product-Centric Competitive Advantage with PRO.FILE PLM

Jan. 25, 2024
Gain insight on best practices and strategies you need to accelerate engineering change management and reduce time to market. Register now for your opportunity to accelerate your...

How Manufacturers Can Optimize Operations with Weather Intelligence

Nov. 2, 2023
The bad news? Severe weather has emerged as one of the biggest threats to continuity and safety in manufacturing. The good news? The intelligence solutions that build weather ...

Transformative Capabilities for XaaS Models in Manufacturing

Feb. 14, 2024
The manufacturing sector is undergoing a pivotal shift toward "servitization," or enhancing product offerings with services and embracing a subscription model. This transition...

Voice your opinion!

To join the conversation, and become an exclusive member of IndustryWeek, create an account today!