Nursery rhyme cures Dilbert creator's speechlessness

Scott Adams, the creator of 'Dilbert' poses with two Dilbert characters at a party. Picture / Reuters

A simple nursery rhyme cured a complex affliction this week, when Scott Adams, creator of comic strip Dilbert, regained his voice after 18 months of speechlessness.

Adams was suffering from Spasmodic Dysphonia, a neurological condition that causes the vocal cords to spasm involuntarily causing the voice to break and speech patterns to be interrupted.

According to Adams' specialist doctor, no one has ever recovered from the condition before. Though Botox shots to the neck can help reduce spasms temporarily, the voice returns weak and whispery.

However, Adams, a self-proclaimed optimist, was not deterred and set about finding his own cure to the condition.

Writing on his daily blog Dilbertblog.typepad.com, Adams said:

"Every day for months and months I tried new tricks to regain my voice. I visualised speaking correctly and repeatedly told myself I could. I used self hypnosis. I used voice therapy exercises. I spoke in higher pitches, or changing pitches. I tried speaking in foreign accents. I tried singing some words that were especially hard."

After months of trial and error, Adams was helping with a homework assignment when he read the classic nursery rhyme:

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. Jack jumped over the candle stick.

Suddenly, he found he could speak again.

"My brain remapped. My speech returned," wrote Adams.

"Not 100%, but close, like a car starting up on a cold winter night. And so I talked that night. A lot. And all the next day. A few times I felt my voice slipping away, so I repeated the nursery rhyme and tuned it back in. By the following night my voice was almost completely normal."

In contrast to Adams' optimistic attitude, his alter-ego Dilbert is renowned for his bleak and cynical outlook on life, with lines such as, "Try giving up hope. It turns the bad feelings into emptiness."

- NZHERALD STAFF