Why Does Hodor Keep Hodor-ing? Neuroscience Explains

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Hodor hodor hodor. Hodor hodor? Hodor. Hodor-hodor. Hodor!

Oh, um, excuse me. Did you catch what I said?

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Fans of the hit HBO show Game of Thrones, the fifth season of which premieres this Sunday, know what I’m referencing, anyway. Hodor is the brawny, simple-minded stableboy of the Stark family in Winterfell. His defining characteristic, of course, is that he only speaks a single word: “Hodor.”

But those who read the A Song of Ice and Fire book series by George R R Martin may know something that the TV fans don’t: his name isn’t actually Hodor. According to his great-grandmother Old Nan, his real name is Walder. “No one knew where ‘Hodor’ had come from,” she says, “but when he started saying it, they started calling him by it. It was the only word he had.”

Whether he intended it or not, Martin created a character who is a textbook example of someone with a neurological condition called expressive aphasia.

Why we hate the sound of our own voice

Why don't we recognize our own voices when we hear a recording?

Most importantly, why don't we like what we hear?

I'm over at NBCNews.com's The Body Odd blog today explaining why.

Check it out here!

Why that echoey phone feedback drives us nuts

Hey, braniacs!

I'm over at NBCNews.com's The Body Odd blog this week talking about delayed auditory feedback (DAF) and why it makes for such a difficult time speaking...

...and, strangely, why DAF can be used to improve fluency in those who stutter.

Check it out here!

Using psychology to silence your enemies: the speech-jammer gun

Chances are you've been in a quiet, peaceful place, such as a library or work cubicle, concentrating intently on a task at hand, when suddenly someone's obnoxious ringtone goes off. That's bad enough. But then they answer it, and you're subjected to five or ten minutes of one-sided conversation, giggles, and abject, torturous curiosity. Don't you just want to shoot that person? Well, now you can.

And you won't even go to jail for it—for this new silencing gun, or "speech-jammer," uses not ammunition to do the trick, but psychology!