The Amazing Human Brain

The other day a coworker sent me an email, then came running in to tell me I had to read it immediately. Wow I thought! What could be so critical? When I opened it I thought it was corrupt because the content looked like a mess of letters thrown together. But when I looked closer I was a surprised to find it was readable.

Wow, I thought. Fascinated, I kept staring at the words. I was amazed that the brain was able to decipher such a heap of misspelled words.  Here’s the original email content:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer 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.

Strange isn’t it.  I did some searching on the Internet and found that 90% of English reading people can read this passage without any trouble at all.  One of the pages I found was authored by a man claiming to be employed at Cambridge University and working in the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit.  According to his page there was no research performed by him or his colleagues on this matter.  That doesn’t make it any less interesting to me.  Wherever this was discovered makes little difference because it is readable, and amazing at the same time.  Whether scientifically discovered or stumbled across by an idiot, I don’t care.