Speech in the foreign accent syndrome: differential diagnosis between organic and functional cases

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is an extremely rare disorder, with 112 cases described until 2019. We compare two cases of the foreign accent syndrome in native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese in its classic form (FAS) and psychiatric variant (FALS). Two cases were analyzed: (1) a right-handed, 69-year-old man, with a prior history of stroke, and (2) a right-handed, 43-year-old woman, diagnosed with schizophrenia. They were evaluate for language and speech, including the speech intelligibility. Both patients had speech impairments complaints, similar to a new accent, without previous exposure to a foreign language. However, the onset of the speech disorder was sudden in case 1 and insidious and with transient events in case 2, with speech intelligibility scores of 95.5 and 55.3% respectively. Besides neurologic impairment, the clinical presentation of FALS was extremely severe and differed to that expected in FAS cases, in which speech intelligibility is preserved.

Stroke or No Stroke: A Case Report of Bilingual Aphasia

“…6 Alternative case series describe a slightly different phenomenon known as foreign accent syndrome in which a patient suffers a stroke and thereafter speaks with what bystanders deem to be a foreign accent. 7 This is actually a form of mild dysarthria giving only the appearance of accented speech rather than true transition to a new phonation. In this case, however, it was clarified with the Québec interpreter that by "English" he meant the colloquial term French Canadians use for their Englishspeaking countrymen, rather than a "British" accent.…”

Sindrome dell’accento straniero

“…Più precisamente, questo accento 'straniero' non è associabile al parlante ma alla percezione del ricevente (Verhoeven et al 2005). Sebbene tradizionalmente la FAS sia stata considerata una conseguenza di un danno strutturale, studi recenti hanno dimostrato che può consistere anche in un disturbo funzionale (Lee et al 2016;McWhirther et al 2019;Dos Santos Barretto & Ortiz 2020) o più in generale, essere il risultato di cause sia strutturali che funzionali.…”