system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why does a word no longer seem like a word to our brain after we say it so many times?
gpt
It's not fully understood why, but its called semantic saturation. Effectively the part of your brain that knows the sound of the word and the part of the brain that knows the meaning of the word are different. Through repeated use, the pathways between these two parts get "tired" and so you don't associate the sound to a word right away. You brain hears the sounds just fine, but its a bit slower to find the meaning so it just interprets it as meaningless sound at first.