I was stricken with awe at the poetic flow of words that Tom still managed to summon up, even as his language ability declined. His last entry almost brought me to tears; tears of both sadness and joy.

I think accounts such as this have important implications for how we think of the connection between language and cognition and consciousness. Intuitively, language seems in many ways essential to our ability to order, interpret, and categorize information. To understand our private subject experiences and explain them to others, we tend to rely on language (at least, when not expressing them through visual, musical, or other forms of art). Language seems… well, almost necessary.

Yet, while for Tom, “[...] language to describe things in the world is very small, limited” his thoughts remain, “[...] vast, limitless and normal, same as they ever were.”

I couldn’t put it any better myself, intact language ability and all.