Resumen de Rude awakenings
Few words can freeze the moment in quite the same way--yet researchers had been shy about studying swearing. It has long been known that the brain processes swear words differently from more genteel vocabulary. As people lose aspects of higher cognition because of injury or neurodegenerative disease, their ability to issue volleys of profanity often remains intact. That may be because even though the cortex, which people rely on for more complex speech, maybe damaged, curses hunker down in areas such as the amygdala and basal ganglia, which are often left intact. Here, O'Callaghan discusses how researchers are finding that the crudest outbursts can reveal ancient links between words and thoughts.
