Cymatics

One of the coolest videos I've seen in a while: Cymatics. A superbly edited music video that shows the different ways that sound vibrations transform into different visible patterns across different media.

Axons to the Ox House, what does that even mean?

I know that Axons to the Ox House probably seems like a strange title for a blog, I bet you're wondering what on earth it has to do with speech-language pathology or bilingualism? Well, for starters I'll admit that I chose the name because a) it wasn't already taken and b) I thought it sounded catchy and memorable. However, there is a deeper meaning behind the name that some of you may have already picked up on. As most already know, an axon is the prolonged part of a neuron that typically carries an electrical impulse. Cool. So that portion of the name covers my interest in neuroscience, but what about Ox House? Well, that comes from my recent discovery of the origins of our alphabet by means of a highly recommendable lecture series titled Writing and Civilization from the Great Courses on Audible. As I recently learned, alpha and beta and the corresponding symbols A and B were at one point Phoenician pictographs representing an ox and a house. In the original Phoenician script these symbols represented the first sound in the Phoenician words for ox and house respectively. In ancient Phoenician, aleph, meaning ox, actually started with a glottal stop. However, when the Greeks (who did not count with glottal stop in their phonemic inventory) adopted and adapted the Phoenician writing system, they assigned it the value of the first sound they heard and called it alpha. Of course, the symbols A and B have undergone many transformations over the years and are no longer recognizable as an ox and a house. Though, if you turn the A upside down you can see how it could easily have been an ox head with the two legs of the A being the horns of the ox. As for B, I'm not quite sure how it looks like a house, but I trust the scholars who have spent their careers researching the pictographic genealogy of B. All of this, however, is just really cool trivia.

I started this blog as a means to practice writing and externalize my thoughts about the many things that interest me in my emergent career as a speech-language pathologist and researcher. I tried to title my blog something witty that would capture the scope of everything that fascinates me. I truly stand amazed at the complexity of our nervous system. Even more awe-inspiring is how we evolved language, and later used the same breathtakingly complex nervous system that allows us to have language in the first place and invented writing with it. This is arguably one of our greatest achievements as homo sapiens sapiens. The story of writing, however, is one of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural exchanges—borrowing and adaptation. That we evolved language is remarkable in and of itself, but that we also evolved the capacity to have and use multiple languages to express the same ideas and concepts in different ways is completely baffling to me. As a future clinician and researcher in the field of Communication Sciences and Disorders, I feel incredibly privileged that one day (knock on wood) I'll get paid to study what happens in the brain when we learn multiple languages and learn to read and write in different languages (and how to fix it when things go wrong). From the neurological foundations of speech and language, to multilingualism, and the miracle of reading and writing, I look forward to exploring (while blogging about it along the way) how axons and synapses got us from using speech to label things like ox and house to the alphabet, all while being able to do it in more than one language to boot.

Where are all the dudes at?

It is no secret that male speech-language pathologists are a rarity. The conspicuous absence of my fellow brethren in our profession is something that has perplexed me ever since I first chose this career path. I certainly didn't expect it to be a male dominated profession, as is sadly and unjustifiably the case in fields like engineering and computer science. Matter of fact, I expected there to be more females than males, as is the case in fields like nursing, education, and psychology. However the true number of SLPs with a Y chromosome is much lower than I ever anticipated: less than 4% with even less males working in school settings.

This topic has already been addressed by several bloggers.The Speech Dudes offer a humorous Top Seven Reasons to Become a Male SLP and The ASHA Leader featured an article a little over a year ago addressing some of the reasons why more men don't choose this profession. Most of the articles I've come across offer 2 types of reasoning on why more men don't chose this profession. The first tends to deal with concerns about salary and career advancement. However, I don't fully buy this. While money is certainly a factor, the SLP median salary of around $69,000 a year is not, in my opinion, low. Furthermore, the median salary jumps up to around $90,000 a year in skilled nursing facilities and supervisory positions. The potential to earn a decent living is there.There are plenty of stereotypically male careers that have a much lower earning potential. The second type of reasoning for the absence of men in our profession usually revolves around the idea that men are somehow averse to female dominated professions. Again, I would point out that other "traditionally female" professions like education and nursing have a much larger share of men, even if they still are a minority. While I believe that both of these reasons are certainly a factor, I think they are missing a key point. The speech-language pathology profession has a PR problem.

I don't think that many people (much less college aged guys who might otherwise excel in the profession) are aware of the breadth and depth of skills that an SLP has and the types of services that we provide.  Most lay people I talk to are under the impression that an SLP works mainly with toddlers and young children with articulation disorders. I don't want to diminish the impact that untreated speech sound disorders can have. However, this should not be the public's prototypical image of an SLP. It is a small part of our skill set. I believe that if more college aged guys were first exposed to the profession in the context of its relation to neuroscience, medicine, and psychology, we would begin to see more guys in the field. If the general public saw the quintessential clinician as the person that addresses issues like aphasia and the effects of brain injury on communication (as opposed to a sub-specialty of early childhood education), more men who might be considering another related profession like PT, OT, neuropsychology, or even school psychology, would not be so quick to dismiss SLP as a viable career choice. Also, I believe that we would eventually see more men working in school settings as well. Once in the field and aware of how neuroscience and cognitive psychology play into language and learning, more guys would realize that working with children in a school setting is not a trivial and easy job. Additionally, once the public realized what an SLP does and is capable of doing, SLPs already working in school settings would start getting more of the respect that they deserve.