Even after a brain stroke, one can recover language skills. A recently concluded study suggests that our system has an ability to redirect itself, when a part of our language system gets affected due to any kind of brain trauma.

Many organs and body parts heal after trauma and disease. But the brain is not so fortunate. Any kind of trauma like a stroke or a blow to the head can lead to irreversible damage and loss of certain skills. However in case of language, a part of the system may get affected, the whole doesn’t collapse.

Michael S. Vitevitch, associate professor of psychology at the ‘University of Kansas’ and an affiliated scientist with ‘KU’s Life Span Institute’, tries to understand this ability by borrowing certain tools of mathematics. He used graph theory to find out how words are stored in the human memory that even after a brain trauma, the language system stills manages to reroute itself. He compared the system with the flights which manage to run efficiently even in the case of severe weathers. The same kind of network works behind the complex system of words in a human brain.

He found a glossary of words in a human mind which unlike a dictionary doesn’t only stores and relates to the words alphabetically, but organizes different words differently on the basis of sound, meaning and a combination of sound and meaning. Interested by the work already been carried out by other scientists in the field of networks, he decided to look at the word system in the same mathematical way.

He developed a network of words, each node of which representing an individual word. He prepared a database of around 20,000 commonly used English words among the native speakers. Pajek was used in making this database which is one of the most commonly used programs of analysis and illustration.

The words sounding alike joined together like nodes with a link for example, the nodes hat, cut, cap and scat were connected to the node cat. Only few of the nodes were found to be carrying large number of connections. These small networks existing between the words also help in keeping the word system functioning even when the brain system fails.

Vitevitch’s study showed that the word network and the arrangement of nodes share the same characteristics of the small world, also popularly known as “six degrees of separation.” This theory says that in today’s small world, each person is only six people away from everyone else on the planet. The word system comprising more of small networks therefore is able to work efficiently and strongly and resists the damage and the disease.

This study has opened new perspective in the field of mental glossary present in a human mind, leading to a better understanding of language development and processing.

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