Spelling and Math in the same part of the brain? If so, what happened to me?
 

As the title implies im wondering if these two thinking processes had any 'brainedness' in common.

The reason I ask this question is that I'm a horrible speller, and have never been good at math. Any/all abstract math gives me serious issues, but I can apply equations fine when I can put them in context like in chem/physics. I cant spell worth a lick, but I tested extremely high in verbal standardized college admissions tests. What I'm trying to point out is I have very specific deficiencies that dont span an entire broad academic category like verbal or math/science....

So I've come to the completely unscientific opinion that spelling and math are indeed localized to one region of my brain, and that region stroked out when my mom drank one too many gin and tonics in 1st trimester. Any neuro/psych people going to put me in my place, or validate my brilliant conclusion?

It aggrivates me that certain aspects of learning seem so genetically (or polygeneticly) predisposed. I can't imagine how frusterating it must be for people who have more serious learning disabilities and are unable to realize their full intellectual potential.


/four spelling corrections via http://www.spellcheck.net/cgi-bin/spell.exe

If you grew up speaking German, you would not have ever found out that you were such a bad speller. Why? Spelling is trivial in German, as is in Spanish. Words are spelled just like they sound. There is no Spelling Bee in Germany. I cannot think of any language other than English where people can compete in nationwide spelling competition. English language has tons of weird ass exceptions with spelling so you pretty much have to learn each word. Perhaps your terrible spelling is indicative of your brilliant mind. Perhaps it is trying to tell you that these spelling rules do not make any sense. And it would be right.

Our culture has some fascination with extraordinary aptitude at one thing accompanied by extraordinary deficiency at others. Some that comes to my mind are: Sylvia Plath, a literary genius, is overcome by depression and bipolar disorder, John Nash, a mathematical genius plagued by schizophrenia. When I think of geniuses, the first thing that comes to my mind is some form of absent-minded professor type. It's easy to forget that many, if not most, "geniuses" were seemingly quite normal and free of any obvious defects. Linus Pauling, John von Neumann, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Robert Oppenheimer all with towering intellect did not suffer from any obvious defects.

Perhaps if you turn out to be really brilliant and make some memorable contribution to history, maybe your biographer will devote a paragraph or two on your biography about your difficulty with spelling and how it was fortunately overcome with dilligent application of nascent spell-checking technology.

i am almost in the same boat, i would say i am strong at almost every academic subject except spelling, it kills me. My dad told me that he met lots of pople that were logiicly minded that were bad spellers. he told me if you were extreamly logical spelling wasnt possible for you, b/c spelling isnt logical at all. Anyway just my ramblings, i am sure my dad just said it to make me feel better.

Math = logic. Once you realize how it works on a basic level (1+1=2) you become established in a system.
Language = memorization. Agreed with alkaloid here. English, because of it's many roots, is a patchwork of languages. There are very few certian rules in the english language, so we essentially have to memorize a lot of it.
I don't see these two processes being the equivalant of each other. Don't worry about it.

How did you learn to read?

There are two signifcant ways of learning how to read: phonics and iconography. Phonics is when you memorize the sounds of individual letters and fragments of words and certain rules (like a silent 'e' at the end of a word usually set off the previous vowel to its hard sound). 80% of english words follow 'rules', the rest you just have to memorize.

If you learned through the iconographic approach, which is basically memorizing what the word looks like, then you probably aren't a good speller. This approach has been blamed for the growing rate of illiteracy in America during the 20th century.

Also, listening to music or speech while sleeping has been linked to illiteracy. There was a CIA experiment called MK-ultra that discovered this problem. The subjects were sedated and forced to listen to commands and 'suggestion' and once the experiment was over, the subjects couldn't read anymore.

Well, John von Neumann looked up secretaries skirts:

Clearly a nut! ;-)