This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence
by
Ursula Kania, University of Liverpool
Over 50,000 years ago, humans started speaking and we’ve not shut up since. Sometimes, though, we struggle to remember the name of an object, a place, or a person we want to talk about. The technical term for this phenomenon is “lethologica”.
While severe word-finding difficulties can be due to serious neurological issues, such as a stroke or dementia, drawing the occasional, temporary blank is very common. Unsurprisingly, stress doesn’t help, and it gets worse as we age.
But what can we do if we’re coming up empty yet still want to keep the conversation going?
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