Foreign Accent following Brain Injury: Syndrome or Epiphenomenon?

A Lilt of Finland in Worcester, Massachusetts: A Case of Foreign Accent Syndrome

“…In the literature review of Edwards and associates, 3 7 of 22 authors described a culprit lesion in the left motor cortex. Interestingly, all were cases of unlearned FAS.…”

“…However, basal ganglia, capsular, callosal, diffuse, and even right-sided pre-and post-central gyrus lesions have been reported. [2][3][4]6,7 Although most often transient, because FAS occurs for weeks to months, it is thought to represent a discrete phenomenology, rather than an articulatory compensatory mechanism for stroke (or other lesion) related dysarthria. Furthermore, the speech in FAS is not always dysarthric, dyspraxic, or dysphasic.…”

“…3,4,6 For previously learned FAS, it is possible that bilingual or bidialectical prosodic information is stored in discrete cortical areas, resulting in reemergence of formerly suppressed speech patterns with a lesion damaging the cortical area or pathways subserving the dominant speech patterns.…”

“…Usually occurring in consequence to some brain dysfunction, often stroke, two distinct types of FAS are described: [1] acquisition of an accent the patient was previously unfamiliar with or unexposed to, the unlearned foreign accent, and [2] the reversion to a previously learned accent. In addition to ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke, [2][3][4][5] traumatic brain injury, 3,6 multiple sclerosis, 7 and the herald of primary progressive aphasia 8 have all been reported as causes of the foreign accent syndrome.…”

Foreign Accent Syndrome Secondary to Medication Withdrawal: A Case Report

“…8 FAS differs from other speech disorders such as aphasia and dysarthria in that the speech produced is within the realm of natural variation in language so that patients are still comprehensible and simply perceived as foreign. 9,10 The following is a case of FAS that likely developed secondary to the discontinuation of the patient's inappropriately prescribed Parkinson's medications. A similar case has not been found in the medical literature.…”