Mar 05, 2023 20:00:00

A rare ``foreign language-like accent syndrome'' where Italians suddenly start speaking with a Canadian accent is reported, possibly due to the new corona

Only 150 cases of ``

foreign-like accent syndrome '' have been reported in a peer-reviewed journal.・Presented at Neurocase. While such cases are often caused by brain damage, it is reported that this patient's brain did not show any abnormalities.

A multimodal imaging approach to foreign accent syndrome. A case report: Neurocase: Vol 28, No 6
https://doi.org/10.1080/13554794.2023.2168558

Italian woman's rare 'foreign accent syndrome' caused her to sound Canadian | Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/italian-womans-rare-foreign-accent-syndrome-caused-her-to-sound-canadian

The patient diagnosed with ``foreign language-like accent syndrome'' in the paper published this time is a 50-year-old Italian woman at the time of writing the article, and her native language is Italian. However, one day he suddenly had difficulty speaking and writing, and after five minutes of slurred speech, he went to the emergency room.

The doctor then noticed that the woman was speaking with an unfamiliar accent. The woman began learning English at school when she was 10 years old, and later acquired English through work in an English-speaking country, but the change was reflected in both Italian and English.

Specifically, it is said that ' Canadian raising ', which is characterized by the pronunciation of diphthongs such as 'ou' of 'house' and 'about', was seen. A Canadian colleague, who has worked with women in the workplace for 20 years, testified to the doctor that this accent is unique to Canada.

As mentioned above, these symptoms can also be caused by head trauma or brain disease, so doctors performed several scans of the woman's brain, but there were no signs of brain damage. . In addition, it was said that the woman had a positive reaction for the new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) a week before visiting the hospital, but it was negative at the time of the visit.

Because the cause could not be determined by routine tests, researchers at the Carlo Vesta Neurological Institute in Milan conducted a thorough examination that combined brain scans with cognitive and psychiatric tests. Specifically, a test was conducted to examine brain activity during a task that activates the parts of the brain involved in speech production and language processing in both Italian and English. matter.

However, no abnormalities were found in the brain after all, and the brain activity pattern was the same as that of a healthy bilingual adult. On the other hand, although the psychiatric test results were generally within the normal range, it was found that the level of anxiety was slightly higher. There was also a tendency for obsessive-

compulsive personality disorder, in which flexibility is impaired due to orderliness and perfectionism.

In the end, the cause of the woman's foreign accent syndrome could not be determined, but several hypotheses have been made based on the above test results. First, there was no brain damage or abnormal brain activity, so the cause may have been caused by psychological factors. Previous cases of foreign accent syndrome have also been associated with psychological and mental disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorders, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is said that there are cases where a connection is pointed out.

Experts also point out that 'neurological factors' such as subtle lesions that do not appear in brain scans cannot be ruled out. For example, in COVID-19, a woman infected just before foreign language-like accent syndrome, a problem of `` brain fog, '' in which cognitive function declines as if the head is hazy due to damage to the brain, has been reported. I'm here.

In fact, it is known that there are at least two cases of foreign accent syndrome that have been linked to COVID-19. In the first case from Italy , the patient was a 48-year-old woman who developed a phonological change in her pronunciation that sounded like a different regional accent after being treated in an intensive care unit for COVID-19. In the second case in Japan , the patient recovered from COVID-19 and was discharged from the hospital the day after because he had difficulty speaking and was transported again. I am an 85 year old woman.

The woman in our case had a Canadian accent even after discharge from the hospital, and 8 months later, the results of the follow-up examination were the same as at the time of onset. However, the woman said, 'I can now adjust my accent when I'm talking to people I know,' the study's authors report.