Different Perceived Foreign Accents in One Patient after Prerolandic Hematoma

Abstract

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS), a rare disorder characterized by the emergence of a new accent perceived as foreign by listeners, is usually reported with left brain damage. We here report the case of a 28-year-old native Brazilian who appeared, to the examiner, to show a North American accent during recovery from Broca’s aphasia. The lesion was due to a frontal hematoma. Without referring specifically to speech, we asked 10 independent observers to comment on a videotape of the patient’s interview. Seven reported that the patient had a foreign accent, while 3 simply noted a ‘strange’ accent. The observers did not agree on the origin of the accent, 5 identifying it as Spanish, 1 as German, and 1 as south Brazilian. These findings suggest that FAS is not due to the acquisition of a specific foreign accent, but to impairment of the suprasegmental linguistic abilities (tone, accent, pauses, rhythm, and vocal stress) that make it possible to distinguish native language.

Foreign accent syndrome due to conversion disorder: Phonetic analyses and clinical course

“…For similar reasons, others have suggested that some cases of FAS may be mild forms or a subtype of AOS (Duffy, 2005;Whiteside & Varley, 1998). Numerous cases in the FAS literature are described as having evolved from nonfluent aphasia and/or AOS, or as including residual symptoms of these disorders (Ardila et al, 1988;Christoph et al, 2004;Graff-Radford, Cooper, Colsher, & Damasio, 1986;Ingram et al, 1992;Varley et al, 2006). In one case the foreign accent evolved to AOS during recovery from a left hemisphere stroke (Marië n et al, 2006).…”

“…A review of these cases shows that the etiology and presenting symptoms of FAS are far from uniform. Despite good agreement among listeners that the accent sounds ''foreign,'' there is typically poor agreement as to the language associated with the accent (e.g., Blumstein, Alexander, Ryalls, Katz, & Dworetzky, 1987;Christoph et al, 2004;Gurd, Bessel, Bladon, & Bamford, 1988;Ingram, McCormack, & Kennedy, 1992). Detailed phonetic analyses of speech patterns have revealed allophonic variations that are atypical of the speakers' native language, particularly in prosody and vowel quality, but the unavailability of similar measures from the individuals' normal speech limits conclusions regarding the precise nature of the changes.…”

Neurogenic foreign accent syndrome: Articulatory setting, segments and prosody in a Dutch speaker

“…At the suprasegmental level, neurogenic FAS has often been noted to have a fundamental change of speech rhythm which is described as slow (Ardila, Rosselli, & Ardila, 1988), different (Christoph, de Freitas, dos Santos, Lima, Araujo, & Carota, 2004), isosyllabic (Berthier, Ruiz, Massone, Startkstein, & Leiguarda, 1991), staccato (Berthier et al, 1991), scanning (Mariën et al, 2006) or syllable-timed (Mariën & Verhoeven, 2007). In addition to changes in speech rhythm, occasional problems with word stress placement are sometimes observed (Gurd, Bessell, Bladon, & Bamford, 1988).…”

Multidisciplinary Assessment and Diagnosis of Conversion Disorder in a Patient with Foreign Accent Syndrome

“…Traditionally, FAS is most commonly associated with lefthemisphere lesions [1] secondary to CVA [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] and traumatic brain injury (TBI) [14][15][16][17]. The condition is often preceded or accompanied by other communication disorders such as aphasia, dysarthria, and apraxia of speech [18].…”