[Grammar] "A hijacked brain and a tongue held hostage"

[Lekith]

I've been reading few articles on Psychology and I came across a headline which is a bit tricky for me to understand it . It goes as " A hijacked brain and a tongue held hostage" and the link for this article is https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...201408/hijacked-brain-and-tongue-held-hostage

The thing is I understood what was in the article but I couldn't get what the headline is about. I mean A hijacked Brain and a tongue held hostage ? What is it... Does it mean a brain and a tongue holding something captive or does the phrase " a tongue held hostage" mean a tongue was held hostage by someone/something else or does it mean a tongue was holding something/ someone a hostage . I couldn't be able to interpret what this headline means so please help me understand this statement . I would mean so much to me. I spent last night thinking about this and gave myself a hard time. Please help me

 

[jutfrank]

The brain and the tongue are both held hostage by the gut bacteria.

This means that the brain and tongue are under the control of the gut bacteria. It's your gut bacteria who influence your behaviour (your brain) and what you want to eat (your tongue).

 

[emsr2d2]

I've been reading a few articles on psychology and I came across a headline which is a bit tricky for me to understand. [STRIKE]it.[/STRIKE] It goes [STRIKE]as[/STRIKE] "A hijacked brain and a tongue held hostage" and the link for this article is https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...201408/hijacked-brain-and-tongue-held-hostage

The thing is I understood what was in the article but I couldn't get what the headline is about. I mean "A hijacked brain and a tongue held hostage"? [STRIKE]What is it...[/STRIKE] Does it mean a brain and a tongue holding something captive, [STRIKE]or[/STRIKE] does the phrase "a tongue held hostage" mean a tongue was held hostage by someone/something else or does it mean a tongue was holding something/someone [STRIKE]a[/STRIKE] hostage?

I couldn't [STRIKE]be able to[/STRIKE] interpret what this headline means so please help me understand this statement. It would mean so much to me. I spent last night thinking about this and gave myself a hard time. Please help me.

Welcome to the forum. :hi:

Please note my corrections to your post above. It's important to remember these rules of written English:

- Start every sentence with a capital letter.
- End every sentence with one appropriate punctuation mark.
- Don't put a space before a full stop, comma, question mark or exclamation mark.
- Always put a space after a full stop, comma, question mark or exclamation mark.
- Don't put a space after opening quotation marks or before closing quotation marks.
- Always put a space before opening quotation marks and after closing quotation marks.
- Don't put a space either side of a slash mark.

Only capitalise proper nouns - in your piece there was no need to capitalise "psychology" or "brain".

 

[GoesStation]

Only capitalise proper nouns - in your piece there was no need to capitalise "psychology" or "brain".

And it was incorrect to do so.