can write but can't read!

This is one of the weirdest things I have ever known.

Imagine that woke up one day and there is nothing unusual, everything is fine.

There wasn't any different from any other morning.

But when try to read the newspaper you find it something else, the words and the letters are weird, like it's form other country or planet.

This happened to Howard Engel, a Canadian novelist. He had suffered a stroke. For him the words and letters don't make any sense. It calls ALEXIA or "Word Blindness". But he could recognize the photos and the other shapes normally.

Actually Mr. Howard Engel is getting paid for writing detective stories.

Yes, he is a writer. So this is a big problem for him, I think he may think at that moment about finding another job. But there was other thing we didn't tell you about it yet, he still can write! Why is that? It's because the part of reading in our brains is different from the writing part.

So the problem is in the brain not the eyes, when he sees any word his eyes identified the letters but his brain can't do that. When he writes he knows what he writes, his brain can deal with his hand and makes them write normally. So every time he reads he identified the words by tracing each letter with his finger on the page or on the air, or he can use his tongue inside his month to tracing letters.

After Mr. Howard Engel had ALEXIA he was able to write two new books. it's so amazing for me.

Try writing "cat" 20 times, and then on the 21st try, write "cat" in the air with your finger. You know as you write in the air that the motions you make equal "cat." This is called "motor memory." This specific set of strokes triggers the idea of "cat" in your brain.

Engel couldn’t see words with his eyes. His visual cortex was broken. But he could "see" when he used the motor part of his brain, first by tracing letters on a page, then by "writing" those same letters in the air, and then, strangely, when he shifted to copying letters with his tongue on the roof of his mouth. Tongue-copying was the fastest.

Article from npr.org