There’s magic in your brain

Just by reading these words your brain is performing the most amazing magic: translating these squiggly lines into words that convey meaning. What an awesome invention writing is! How did those cavemen get along without it? And would their brains have performed the same magic if they had the opportunity?

You’ve probably seen another neat trick that your brain can do, which is reading what’s intended and not actually written.
Wehn wdors bomcee scmaberld, banris sltil raed rhigt anlog.
As long as you leave the first and last letters alone, you can still read it with the rest mixed up.

How is it that the same squiggles in different orders can be unintelligible then? I’m talking about languages that use the same alphabet. I could write squiggles that look just like English squiggles, but are really Spanish squiggles. Then the brain needs more training to make the magic happen.

I heard on the radio about a symphony orchestra in Korea sight reading a piece of music at a performance, at the request of the guest conductor. This is some more brain magic. Some people can look at the music and hear in their head what it should sound like. I’ve always had a problem with doing that. Is this from lack of training or lack of ability?

Steve’s aunt Carolyn told me she doesn’t have a any sort of map in her head and has a hard time navigating to where she wants to go. There are probably a lot of people lacking this sort of brain magic. With her, training hasn’t helped.

My architect brother says he can tell what the building will feel like before he draws it. I can’t do that either, but I sort of know how that works because I do a similar thing with programming computers. Maybe we all have brains with different magic.