Today's psycholinguistic lecture was on aphasia or language impairment caused by brain damage. Dr. Oh showed us a clip in which a man who had suffered a stroke and looked like in his fifties, was struggling with words when he was asked a question by a psycholinguist. The whole class was silent. i'm not sure if others were stunned or fascinated to silence.

Given a statement, "The lion ate the leopard", and when asked "Who was eaten?", he couldn't answer.

Watching the old man, who was a lawyer in practise before he suffered the stroke, struggling in answering such simple questions because his brain damage impaired his language comprehension, was just a bit heart-wrenching.

It was sad to detect a sense of helplessness in his tone when he couldn't answer and had to shrug and finally say "I don't know". Once a lawyer who could read thick law books and understand complicated law jargons, one day a blood clot changed everything.

When we converse with another person, from hearing what the person said, to processing in the brain, to comprehending what we heard and finally eliciting a response, it was only a matter of miliseconds. Language processing can be so complicated and yet so natural to us that we often take it for granted. Because we never thought of it. Because everything is just so intuitive. Only when we've seen these unfortunate people struggling with it, we would realise that not everyone had it easy. Abilities that we find it easy and natural might just be the hardest thing for these people.

Just like WQ papa said on Sunday. There is a difference between "house" and "home". The house that other people lived in is their home, no matter how dirty or dilapidate it might be. And there is also a subtle difference between feeling merely pitiful to those unfortunate people and truly empathized with them. Compassionate stems from empathy.