Foreign Accent Syndrome: Symptoms, Causes and Treatment

This disorder causes patients to appear to speak involuntarily with a foreign accent.

Foreign Accent Syndrome is a rare and poorly investigated clinical condition, but it poses one of the great enigmas of neuroscience in relation to language. Broadly speaking, it is a condition in which a person suddenly and without apparent explanation acquires an accent different from the native accent.

In this article we explain what is the Foreign Accent SyndromeWhat are its main characteristics and what science has found so far.

What is the Foreign Accent Syndrome?

The Foreign Accent Syndrome is characterized by the sudden presence of an accent different from that of the mother tongue, while speech proceeds normally. It was first described in 1907 by the neurologist Pierre Marie, but few cases have been investigated.

It usually follows strokes and occurs apparently suddenly. The person begins to speak in his or her native language with full intelligibility, but with an apparently foreign accent which is with an apparently foreign accent that cannot be avoided and that the person does not recognize as his or her own..

Symptoms

The accent is recognized by others as different from that of the native language, although it is not necessarily identified as that of a particular language. In other words, the accent is heard and interpreted by others as foreign, because significant changes are identified in the pronunciation of some syllables. in the pronunciation of certain syllables, consonants, and vowels that are that are considered key to the mother tongue, but do not necessarily correspond entirely to another accent.

Listeners may recognize that the speaker is using their native language (e.g., Spanish), but with an accent that may be French, English, German, or any other, which varies according to the listeners' opinions. In other words, there is generally no agreement on what the perceived accent is, which is why it is also called Pseudo-Foreign Accent Syndrome.

This syndrome has been related to a neuromotor alteration, so it is also defined as a neuromotor alteration. is also defined as an acquired haemodynamic alteration, in which the central nervous system of the brain and the brain are involved.in which the central nervous system plays a very important role. It may be accompanied by manifestations related to language and communication disorders such as aphasia and dysarthria, although not necessarily.

Representative clinical cases

González-Álvarez, J., Parcet-Ibars, M.A., Ávila, C. et al. (2003) have made a review of the scientific literature on Foreign Accent Syndrome, and tell us that the first documented case was in 1917. It was a Parisian who developed an "Alsatian" accent. a Parisian man who developed a "German shepherd" accent after receiving a war wound that had caused a right hemiparesis.

Thirty years later, another of the best known cases of Foreign Accent Syndrome was published, where a 30-year-old Norwegian woman suffered a frontotemporoparietal lesion after being a victim of a Nazi bombing, and as a consequence, her accent began to be recognized by listeners as German.

Because of the highly conflictive context in which she found herself, the German accent caused her various problems in doing the things of everyday life, as she was identified as German.

Cases of Foreign Accent Syndrome have also been described in the scientific literature. without having had previous experience of living with a second language.. They are almost always monolingual.

Associated medical conditions and possible causes

Most of the cases that have been investigated describe the appearance of the syndrome after having been diagnosed with Broca's aphasia, transcortical motor aphasia, subcortical white matter lesions in specific gyri.

In addition to motor language areas, other brain areas that have been related to Foreign Accent Syndrome have been the precentral gyrus, the inferior central gyrus, the corpus callosum and the insular cortex. The relationship with the Rolando's fissure and temporal areas has also been investigated.

In more general terms, the medical causes related to the Foreign Accent Syndrome are mainly cerebrovascular accidents in the left hemisphereThis syndrome is currently being investigated in relation to the neural areas involved in the automation of complex motor behaviors (such as speech, which requires very important neuromuscular coordination).

Currently this syndrome is investigated in relation to the neural areas that regulate articulation, native and second language speech acquisition, however there is no agreement on the methodological options that would be determinant to find a definitive explanation for this syndrome.

For this same reason there is not enough information on prognoses and treatments, although some auditory and sensory feedback techniques have been tested that aim at modifying verbal fluency, as well as auditory noise-masking techniques have been tried and found to be have been found to be satisfactory in treating, for example, stuttering, since people tend to improve their verbal fluency when they stop listening to their own voice.

Bibliographical references:

• González-Álvarez, J., Parcet-Ibars, M.A., Ávila, C. et al. (2003). A rare speech disorder of neurological origin: foreign accent syndrome. Neurology Journal, 36(3): 227-234.
• Srinivas, H. (2011) Transient foreign accent syndrome. Journal List, doi: 10.1136/bcr.07.2011.4466. Retrieved June 8, 2018. Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3214216/.