Medicine Through Time Foreign accent syndrome(FAS) “When my voice have been changed”
FAS is a rare medical condition involving speech production that usually occurs as a side effect of severe brain injury, such as a stroke or a head injury. Two cases have been reported of individuals with the condition as a development problem and one assoc…iated with severe migraine. Between 1941 and 2009, there have been sixty recorded cases. Its symptoms result from distorted articulatory planning and coordination processes. It must be emphasized that the speaker does not suddenly gain a foreign language (vocabulary, syntax, grammar, etc); they merely pronounce their native language with a foreign or dialectical accent. Despite a recent unconfirmed news report that a Croatian speaker has gained the ability to speak fluent German after emergence from a coma, there has been no verified case where a patient’s foreign language skills have improved after a brain injury (and in fact in the case of the Croatian girl, she lost her ability to speak Croatian).
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