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Your brain may be stronger than you think.
By Christine Schoenwald — Written on Mar 11, 2022
I'm going to come clean: I love all these quizzes, tests, and astrology pieces — anything that will give me some insight into myself.
Who has a secret crush on me? I better find out and take that Facebook test. What Adele song tells my story? What was the most popular food the year I graduated from college? I do them all.
We all enjoy insider information on ourselves, which is why astrology pieces are so popular. But do any of these things really offer any insights into our personalities or tell us anything we don't really know?
Maybe... Possibly... Probably not, but they're still fun. And who's to say that if I had my own Justice League, my best friend wouldn't be in it?
I especially like the quizzes or tests that actually take skill; those make me feel especially smug. I can see the hidden image in the zig-zag or the images in the circle. I must have superpowers.
One of my favorites is trying to read jumbled words to tests your reading skills.
You may have seen something like this floating around on social media:
"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."
Wree you albe to raed taht? Oops! I mean... were you able to read that?
As it turns out, there actually has never been a study at Cambridge University to come up with such findings. And in fact, Matt Davis, a senior research scientist at Cambridge University's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, has all but debunked the statement.
However, the statement was so widely spread that now there's a name for the ability to read jumbled letters — typoglycemia.
What is typoglycemia?
Typoglycemia is the ability to read jumbled words. The word is a mashup of the words 'typo' and 'glycemia.'
According to Davis' research, there are a few factors that influence the brain's ability to read jumbled words, including the length of the words (shorter words are easier to read) and the transposition of letters (where each jumbled letter is located in the word).
For example, Davis presents this sentence: A dootcr has aimttded the magltheuansr of a tageene ceacnr pintaet who deid aetfr a hatospil durg blendur.
Despite following all of the rules of the alleged Cambridge University study, you probably had a much harder time decoding it.
By the way, if you gave up as I did, it says, "A doctor has admitted the manslaughter of a teenage cancer patient who died after a hospital drug blunder."
So while being able to read the popular statement may not actually say anything about your intelligence, it's still a fun brain teaser nonetheless.
We do know that any kind of brain teaser does help with memory and reasoning skills, so while you're feeling like a genius because you can read this kind of text, know that you're exercising and strengthening your brain at the same time.
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Christine Schoenwald is a writer, performer, and astrology lover. She has written over 500 articles on the zodiac signs and how the stars influence us. She's had articles in The Los Angeles Times, Salon, and Woman's Day.