full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Melanie E. Peffer: The artist who won a Nobel Prize... in medicine

Unscramble the Blue Letters


In the late 1860s, scientists bvieeled they were on the verge of uncovering the brain’s biggest secret. They already knew the brain controlled the body through electrical impulses. The qtosuein was, how did these signals travel through the body without changing or degrading? It seemed that perfectly transmitting these impulses would require them to travel uninterrupted along some kind of tissue. This idea, clelad reticular theory, imagined the nervous system as a mvaisse web of tsusie that physically connected every nrvee cell in the body. Reticular theory cpaaeittvd the field with its elegant scipimlity. But soon, a young artist would cut through this conjecture, and sketch a bold new vsioin of how our brains work.

Open Cloze


In the late 1860s, scientists ________ they were on the verge of uncovering the brain’s biggest secret. They already knew the brain controlled the body through electrical impulses. The ________ was, how did these signals travel through the body without changing or degrading? It seemed that perfectly transmitting these impulses would require them to travel uninterrupted along some kind of tissue. This idea, ______ reticular theory, imagined the nervous system as a _______ web of ______ that physically connected every _____ cell in the body. Reticular theory __________ the field with its elegant __________. But soon, a young artist would cut through this conjecture, and sketch a bold new ______ of how our brains work.

Solution


  1. massive
  2. simplicity
  3. vision
  4. captivated
  5. called
  6. nerve
  7. question
  8. believed
  9. tissue

Original Text


In the late 1860s, scientists believed they were on the verge of uncovering the brain’s biggest secret. They already knew the brain controlled the body through electrical impulses. The question was, how did these signals travel through the body without changing or degrading? It seemed that perfectly transmitting these impulses would require them to travel uninterrupted along some kind of tissue. This idea, called reticular theory, imagined the nervous system as a massive web of tissue that physically connected every nerve cell in the body. Reticular theory captivated the field with its elegant simplicity. But soon, a young artist would cut through this conjecture, and sketch a bold new vision of how our brains work.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
nerve cell 3
electrical signals 3
electrical impulses 2
nervous system 2
physically connected 2
reticular theory 2


Important Words


  1. artist
  2. believed
  3. biggest
  4. body
  5. bold
  6. brain
  7. brains
  8. called
  9. captivated
  10. cell
  11. changing
  12. conjecture
  13. connected
  14. controlled
  15. cut
  16. degrading
  17. electrical
  18. elegant
  19. field
  20. idea
  21. imagined
  22. impulses
  23. kind
  24. knew
  25. late
  26. massive
  27. nerve
  28. nervous
  29. perfectly
  30. physically
  31. question
  32. require
  33. reticular
  34. scientists
  35. secret
  36. signals
  37. simplicity
  38. sketch
  39. system
  40. theory
  41. tissue
  42. transmitting
  43. travel
  44. uncovering
  45. uninterrupted
  46. verge
  47. vision
  48. web
  49. work
  50. young