1 00:00:01,840 --> 00:00:07,600 Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff, 2 00:00:07,640 --> 00:00:13,400 Speaker 1: Lauren volbebam here. Every speaker of every language has an accent, 3 00:00:13,720 --> 00:00:17,400 Speaker 1: even if it's considered neutral. An accent is made up 4 00:00:17,440 --> 00:00:20,600 Speaker 1: of the different sounds and stresses that you use in 5 00:00:20,640 --> 00:00:23,880 Speaker 1: pronouncing words and phrases, and it's flavored by all kinds 6 00:00:23,920 --> 00:00:27,280 Speaker 1: of influences, like what languages you grew up with, how 7 00:00:27,360 --> 00:00:29,960 Speaker 1: your family and neighbors speak, and the voices that you 8 00:00:30,040 --> 00:00:34,559 Speaker 1: hear in media. Many accents are common to specific areas, 9 00:00:34,680 --> 00:00:39,680 Speaker 1: but they're also individual. So imagine waking up with a 10 00:00:39,720 --> 00:00:43,360 Speaker 1: different one than you've ever used, not on purpose, you 11 00:00:43,600 --> 00:00:48,360 Speaker 1: just sound different. It's rare, but it does happen. Today, 12 00:00:48,600 --> 00:00:54,160 Speaker 1: let's talk about foreign accent syndrome. We'll start with a 13 00:00:54,200 --> 00:00:59,200 Speaker 1: true story. Lisa Alemia had an overbite sufficiently pronounced for 14 00:00:59,240 --> 00:01:02,480 Speaker 1: her to require jaw surgery. That kind of operation is 15 00:01:02,520 --> 00:01:06,880 Speaker 1: pretty serious and requires complete sedation. When Alamiya woke up, 16 00:01:07,040 --> 00:01:09,240 Speaker 1: she was hoping it would be her new jawline that 17 00:01:09,280 --> 00:01:14,400 Speaker 1: impressed people. Instead, it was the way she spoke. Before 18 00:01:14,440 --> 00:01:17,920 Speaker 1: Alamiya had the surgery, she possessed a gentle Texas drawl, 19 00:01:18,160 --> 00:01:21,480 Speaker 1: which made sense because she was born raised and continued 20 00:01:21,480 --> 00:01:25,520 Speaker 1: to live in Texas. But after the surgery, Alamiya didn't 21 00:01:25,520 --> 00:01:30,600 Speaker 1: sound Textan at all. She sounded British. Her husband and 22 00:01:30,680 --> 00:01:33,480 Speaker 1: three kids thought she was putting it on, but Alamia 23 00:01:33,560 --> 00:01:36,800 Speaker 1: couldn't seem to shake her new sound. The weird thing 24 00:01:36,959 --> 00:01:39,560 Speaker 1: was that she'd never even been to England, but she 25 00:01:39,720 --> 00:01:42,000 Speaker 1: sounded like she might be about to take tea down 26 00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:47,640 Speaker 1: to Nabbey. Things could have been worse. During World War II. 27 00:01:47,840 --> 00:01:50,840 Speaker 1: For example, a Norwegian woman by the name of Astrid 28 00:01:50,920 --> 00:01:53,880 Speaker 1: suffered a brain injury from shrapnel that exploded during a 29 00:01:53,880 --> 00:01:57,520 Speaker 1: bombing raid. When she recovered and was able to speak again, 30 00:01:57,800 --> 00:02:01,680 Speaker 1: she had inexplicably developed a journ of an accent. This 31 00:02:01,880 --> 00:02:06,160 Speaker 1: was extremely inconvenient Norway was at the time occupied by 32 00:02:06,160 --> 00:02:09,320 Speaker 1: the Germans. Anyone who didn't know her well assumed she 33 00:02:09,440 --> 00:02:13,440 Speaker 1: was attached to the occupying enemy force. Shopkeepers refused to 34 00:02:13,440 --> 00:02:15,919 Speaker 1: serve her, and neighbors shunned her, even though she had 35 00:02:15,919 --> 00:02:18,760 Speaker 1: never been to Germany and didn't speak a word of German. 36 00:02:20,919 --> 00:02:23,800 Speaker 1: When Astrid saw a neurologist, he referred to her speech 37 00:02:23,880 --> 00:02:28,760 Speaker 1: as disprosoity. A prosody refers to the non grammatical elements 38 00:02:28,800 --> 00:02:32,840 Speaker 1: of speech like tone and rhythm. The condition was renamed 39 00:02:32,960 --> 00:02:36,480 Speaker 1: foreign accent syndrome or FAS by the time Lisa Alma 40 00:02:36,560 --> 00:02:39,440 Speaker 1: reported her problem to her doctor and managed to convince 41 00:02:39,520 --> 00:02:43,480 Speaker 1: him that she wasn't faking it. FAS is an extremely 42 00:02:43,600 --> 00:02:47,000 Speaker 1: rare form of language disorder, so rare in fact, that 43 00:02:47,000 --> 00:02:49,560 Speaker 1: there are only about one hundred known case studies of it. 44 00:02:51,600 --> 00:02:54,640 Speaker 1: Foreign accent syndrome isn't the sort of phenomena that occur 45 00:02:54,800 --> 00:02:58,320 Speaker 1: when an American watches too much British TV, or you 46 00:02:58,360 --> 00:03:00,560 Speaker 1: move to a new place and pick up some of 47 00:03:00,600 --> 00:03:04,000 Speaker 1: the sounds in vocabulary from the dialect that you're saturated in. 48 00:03:04,960 --> 00:03:08,680 Speaker 1: With FAS, it's almost as though you've suddenly become someone else, 49 00:03:09,160 --> 00:03:12,040 Speaker 1: and it's not clear whether you'll ever get your old, 50 00:03:12,080 --> 00:03:17,760 Speaker 1: familiar accent back. But such a transformation usually doesn't come 51 00:03:17,800 --> 00:03:21,480 Speaker 1: out of the blue. It's often triggered by some physical event, 52 00:03:21,800 --> 00:03:24,480 Speaker 1: such as head trauma, a stroke, or the onset of 53 00:03:24,520 --> 00:03:29,160 Speaker 1: multiple sclerosis. In these cases, researchers typically find that the 54 00:03:29,240 --> 00:03:31,680 Speaker 1: damage sustained has occurred in the parts of the brain 55 00:03:31,760 --> 00:03:34,880 Speaker 1: related to speech, such as the left hemisphere or in 56 00:03:34,920 --> 00:03:39,040 Speaker 1: the middle cerebral artery. The creation of speech is wildly 57 00:03:39,120 --> 00:03:42,880 Speaker 1: complex and involves multiple areas of the brain, so damage 58 00:03:42,880 --> 00:03:46,600 Speaker 1: caused to one area can alter speech without impeding it 59 00:03:47,120 --> 00:03:50,880 Speaker 1: that people with FAS are often entirely coherent and articulate, 60 00:03:51,240 --> 00:03:54,560 Speaker 1: although some can have difficulty with speech elements like word order. 61 00:03:56,640 --> 00:04:00,440 Speaker 1: All of the above causes of FAS are neurogenic. They 62 00:04:00,480 --> 00:04:04,160 Speaker 1: arise in the tissue of the nervous system. Until recently, 63 00:04:04,240 --> 00:04:07,400 Speaker 1: it was thought that foreign accent syndrome was entirely neurogenic 64 00:04:07,440 --> 00:04:11,360 Speaker 1: in origin, but it's now known that FAS can be psychogenic, 65 00:04:11,760 --> 00:04:16,600 Speaker 1: meaning the root can be a mental health issue. Bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, 66 00:04:16,680 --> 00:04:19,520 Speaker 1: and psychological trauma have all been found to correlate with 67 00:04:19,680 --> 00:04:25,839 Speaker 1: rare cases of psychogenic foreign accent syndrome, But sometimes doctors 68 00:04:25,880 --> 00:04:28,760 Speaker 1: are flummixed by the appearance of FAS, as they were 69 00:04:28,800 --> 00:04:32,640 Speaker 1: in the case of Lisa Elmia. Joss surgery doesn't typically 70 00:04:32,680 --> 00:04:36,679 Speaker 1: cause FAS. In fact, there are no other recorded cases 71 00:04:36,680 --> 00:04:41,880 Speaker 1: of this outcome from such a routine operation. Still, the 72 00:04:41,920 --> 00:04:44,960 Speaker 1: sample size for foreign accents syndrome is so small that 73 00:04:45,040 --> 00:04:47,400 Speaker 1: it's hard to establish a set of norms for it. 74 00:04:48,120 --> 00:04:51,440 Speaker 1: There have been Japanese speakers who suddenly began sounding Korean 75 00:04:51,839 --> 00:04:54,640 Speaker 1: a Brits who were mistaken for French people, the Scottish 76 00:04:54,680 --> 00:04:58,360 Speaker 1: people who developed South African accents overnight, and Spaniards who 77 00:04:58,360 --> 00:05:03,080 Speaker 1: seemed to suddenly hail from he hungry. One woman from Plymouth, England, 78 00:05:03,120 --> 00:05:05,560 Speaker 1: went to the emergency room with a severe migraine and 79 00:05:05,640 --> 00:05:10,040 Speaker 1: came out with a Chinese accent. As a white english woman, 80 00:05:10,160 --> 00:05:14,120 Speaker 1: this was hard to explain. Things can get really embarrassing 81 00:05:14,200 --> 00:05:17,240 Speaker 1: for patients with fas, especially if everyone thinks they're faking 82 00:05:17,279 --> 00:05:24,560 Speaker 1: it and at worst being racist. Okay, but whatever the cause, 83 00:05:24,640 --> 00:05:30,120 Speaker 1: physical or mental, how does this happen? For most of us, 84 00:05:30,240 --> 00:05:33,479 Speaker 1: speaking is second nature. We don't even think about how 85 00:05:33,480 --> 00:05:36,960 Speaker 1: complex the process is. But to get words to come 86 00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:38,960 Speaker 1: out of your mouth sounding the way that they need 87 00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:44,000 Speaker 1: to in a given context requires exquisite control of your jaw, tongue, lips, 88 00:05:44,040 --> 00:05:48,960 Speaker 1: and laynxpuscles. If anything messes with this finely calibrated team, 89 00:05:49,279 --> 00:05:53,000 Speaker 1: your speech can end up sounding kind of funny. Think 90 00:05:53,040 --> 00:05:56,080 Speaker 1: about when you have allergies or a cold swelling your 91 00:05:56,120 --> 00:06:00,240 Speaker 1: nose and throat and you sound stuffy or nasally, or 92 00:06:00,400 --> 00:06:03,000 Speaker 1: if you've ever had an anesthetic for a medical procedure 93 00:06:03,120 --> 00:06:06,400 Speaker 1: and started slurring your words from a loss of muscle control. 94 00:06:07,600 --> 00:06:11,400 Speaker 1: Take vowel sounds, for instance, Where we place our tongue 95 00:06:11,440 --> 00:06:14,600 Speaker 1: and how we shape it can result in incredibly subtle 96 00:06:14,680 --> 00:06:18,480 Speaker 1: variations in the way that we pronounce vowels. Shifts and 97 00:06:18,560 --> 00:06:22,120 Speaker 1: vowel sounds are key to different accents. Lose a little 98 00:06:22,160 --> 00:06:24,520 Speaker 1: bit of control over your tongue and you could end 99 00:06:24,600 --> 00:06:28,880 Speaker 1: up sounding different. This is at the heart of foreign 100 00:06:28,920 --> 00:06:32,200 Speaker 1: accent syndrome. It's not that a person recovers from a 101 00:06:32,240 --> 00:06:35,320 Speaker 1: stroke with a brand new cultural identity. It's that the 102 00:06:35,360 --> 00:06:38,520 Speaker 1: stroke has impaired their control over the fine motor skills 103 00:06:38,560 --> 00:06:41,840 Speaker 1: required to sound the way that they used to, especially 104 00:06:41,880 --> 00:06:45,640 Speaker 1: in their vowels, which in turn leads listeners to assume 105 00:06:45,760 --> 00:06:51,000 Speaker 1: that the person has a foreign accent. Accents lie in 106 00:06:51,040 --> 00:06:54,120 Speaker 1: the ear of the listener. In many cases of FAS, 107 00:06:54,360 --> 00:06:57,920 Speaker 1: different listeners can't agree on where the speaker's new accent 108 00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:01,760 Speaker 1: is from. Some people thought that Astrid, the Swedish patient, 109 00:07:02,080 --> 00:07:06,480 Speaker 1: was French, not German. Researchers actually conducted a study in 110 00:07:06,520 --> 00:07:08,960 Speaker 1: which they asked people to identify the accent of a 111 00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:12,840 Speaker 1: person with FAS, and the answers were quite literally all 112 00:07:12,880 --> 00:07:16,520 Speaker 1: over the map. Hearing the same speech. Some listeners said 113 00:07:16,520 --> 00:07:21,520 Speaker 1: it sounded French, others Italian, others Welsh, others Chinese. So 114 00:07:22,200 --> 00:07:25,840 Speaker 1: foreign accent syndrome is sort of a misnomer. It's really 115 00:07:25,920 --> 00:07:32,240 Speaker 1: just unusual. To diagnose and treat foreign accent syndrome, a 116 00:07:32,320 --> 00:07:36,080 Speaker 1: whole team of specialists may get involved, including neurologists to 117 00:07:36,160 --> 00:07:40,000 Speaker 1: evaluate how the patient's nervous system is functioning, radiologists to 118 00:07:40,200 --> 00:07:44,400 Speaker 1: use imaging technologies to look for signs of damage, neuropsychologists 119 00:07:44,400 --> 00:07:48,720 Speaker 1: to examine links between behavior and brain function, clinical psychologists 120 00:07:48,760 --> 00:07:52,720 Speaker 1: to evaluate stress and other mental issues, and speech language 121 00:07:52,760 --> 00:07:58,520 Speaker 1: pathologists to help assess and reduce disordered speech. The treatment 122 00:07:58,520 --> 00:08:01,720 Speaker 1: of a case of neurogenic fa is a specialized form 123 00:08:01,760 --> 00:08:05,840 Speaker 1: of speech therapy known as accent reduction techniques, that is, 124 00:08:06,160 --> 00:08:09,600 Speaker 1: retraining the larynx, tongue, and lips to articulate the way 125 00:08:09,600 --> 00:08:14,280 Speaker 1: that they once did. The treatment of psychogenic FAS requires 126 00:08:14,360 --> 00:08:18,120 Speaker 1: treatment of the underlying illness. The syndrome often disappears as 127 00:08:18,120 --> 00:08:22,880 Speaker 1: a patient recovers from an event or episode, to make 128 00:08:22,920 --> 00:08:26,200 Speaker 1: matters more complicated, though there is a mixed variant of 129 00:08:26,320 --> 00:08:29,200 Speaker 1: FAS in which the origin of the syndrome is considered 130 00:08:29,240 --> 00:08:34,960 Speaker 1: to be a combination of psychogenic and neurogenic causes. As 131 00:08:35,080 --> 00:08:39,840 Speaker 1: medical understanding and diagnostic tools advance, perhaps the differences between 132 00:08:39,920 --> 00:08:44,360 Speaker 1: psychogenic and neurogenic causation will erode a little bit. Some 133 00:08:44,440 --> 00:08:47,520 Speaker 1: recent studies have found that certain mental illnesses can be 134 00:08:47,559 --> 00:08:51,080 Speaker 1: caused by the immune system's response to infections, the showing 135 00:08:51,320 --> 00:08:54,800 Speaker 1: that at least sometimes the mind body divide is not 136 00:08:54,880 --> 00:09:02,600 Speaker 1: as pronounced as we might think. Today's episode is based 137 00:09:02,640 --> 00:09:05,080 Speaker 1: on the article how foreign accent Syndrome works on how 138 00:09:05,120 --> 00:09:08,480 Speaker 1: stuffworks dot Com, written by Oscene Kuran. Brain Stuff is 139 00:09:08,520 --> 00:09:11,160 Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com 140 00:09:11,200 --> 00:09:14,120 Speaker 1: and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts my 141 00:09:14,160 --> 00:09:17,640 Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever 142 00:09:17,640 --> 00:09:19,080 Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.