Heart Health & Mental Health | Jon Barron's Podcast

Spontaneous Foreign Accent

“FAS is a speech disorder that causes a sudden change to speech so that a native speaker is perceived to speak with a ‘foreign” accent. The change can come about as a result of stroke, a bop on the head, brain injury, migraine headache, multiple sclerosis, or apparently, anesthesia.

Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) affects less than 100 people worldwide, but even so, it’s disturbing enough to those who have it that there’s a website devoted to “FAS support.”  According to the website, where you can hear samples of FAS-altered speech, “FAS is a speech disorder that causes a sudden change to speech so that a native speaker is perceived to speak with a ‘foreign” accent. The change can come about as a result of stroke, a bop on the head, brain injury, migraine headache, multiple sclerosis, or apparently, anesthesia.  The causes of the bizarre condition aren’t clear to scientists, although they suspect that victims suffer from a mini-stroke that alters their speech centers.  The good news is that in most cases, the syndrome does not last long.  Find out more in this podcast!