> I believe there’s something being triggered in my brain when speaking to another person This is the entire crux of the mystery isn't it. And perplexingly, it's only the effort to *speak* that this happens with. None of your other muscles tense up in such a way - you can still move your feet, your hands, etc, however you want. This problem is isolated to the vocal apparatus that drives speaking. And even then it's further multi-layered, because things like singing and/or whispering often aren't affected. Utterly bizarre and intriguing. One thing I'm hopeful about for AI is that it will probably dramatically accelerate the science of the human brain and provide answers to mysteries such as these.