Scrambled neurons to blame

According to a Page One story in Tuesday’s newspaper, scientists are currently hard at work studying how jammed brain neurons can tangle the human tongue and result in those maddening tip-of-the-tongue verbal stumbles. I say good on them. The world will surely beat a path to the door of the trail blazer who finds an antidote for this embarrassing affliction.

If you are over 40 you know the drill: You go to introduce your lifelong best friend to someone and you can’t remember the friend’s name. Or you are trying to tell a co-worker about clipping some bodaciously large beast on the way to work and how it stove your car all to hell and you can’t come up with the operative word, “moose.” Serious neuron-scrambled stuff like that haunts many of us.

The tongue-tying process is all very complicated, scientists say, and has to do with interconnecting brain networks that handle thought, syntax and spoken sounds. Individual words and concepts are stored in nodes throughout our computerized brains. To retrieve three of them containing up to 15 syllables takes us only a second, provided all systems are go and things kick in just right.

As you might expect, however, some retrieval jobs go more smoothly than others. When the questions are easy the neurons apparently don’t conspire to produce the classic tongue-tying mental block. Thus, when Johnnie Cochran Jr. — O. J. Simpson’s cocky defense lawyer, who gloats nearly as well as he condescends — pulled on that wool cap before the jury in Simpson’s murder trial out in Los Angeles Wednesday and asked, “If I put this wool cap on, who am I?” it took the average brain only a nanosecond to conduct a search of the nodes and come up with the correct answer: “A grandstanding geek playing to the television cameras.”

Scrambled neurons don’t just tie the tongue in knots, rendering the patient speechless. Shuffled randomly, they can also have the opposite effect — prematurely engaging the mouth before the brain can be put into gear.

The O.J. Simpson hawg wrassle is not the only evidence of this phenomenon, although the courtroom is traditionally the best place to turn to illustrate the point.

“The charge here is theft of frozen chickens,” says the judge from behind his bench. “Are you the defendant, sir?” he asks of the man standing before him.

“No, sir. I’m the guy who stole the chickens,” replies the oaf.

Elsewhere, the defendant in an arson case misses a scheduled court appearance.

“Where were you?” demands the judge when the man finally appears before him days later.

“In the hospital, undergoing treatment,” replies the guy.

“For what?” asks the judge.

“Smoke inhalation.”

(Drum roll, please…)

Sometimes, the neurons can get so drove up that they cause the eye tooth to get in the way of the tongue and a guy can’t see what he’s saying, provoking him to operate on a different wavelength. Enfield’s loquacious Lionel Strong recently sent me a highly dubious story about one such Mainer who went to see a lawyer about filing for divorce.

“Do you have any grounds?” asked the lawyer.

“Yup. Own about 140 acres,” replied the man.

“No. You don’t understand,” said the lawyer. “I mean do you have a Case?”

“Nope. Got a John Deere,” the guy says.

“No, no,” the lawyer protested. “I mean do you have a good solid grudge?

“Sure. That’s where I park my John Deere,” his client explains.

The exasperated lawyer asks “Does your wife beat you up?” and the man replies, “Nope. Both get up about 4:30.” When the lawyer specualtes as to whether the man has much of a suit the old Yankee assures him that, indeed, he has a fine suit. Wears it to church every Sunday.

And so on and so forth, until at long last we arrive at a punchline so politically incorrect that the brain neurons of anyone who would repeat it fetch up in massive gridlock and the words cannot make it beyond the tip of the tongue. Which is probably just as well.

Kent Ward, a regular NEWS columnist, lives in Winterport.