That's a Lovely Accent

Today, we talked about the different parts of the brain and their functions. Each part of the brain has a specific function.  As we talked about the different lobes, the functions of the frontal lobe caught my eye. The frontal lobe is responsible speaking, reasoning, and voluntary movement. Within the left frontal lobe is Broca's area. Broca's area is the language center of the body which controls speech production. As I was thinking about this in class, I came to remember hearing about a woman that went to bed one night and woke up with an accent of a different country. This is called Foreign Accent Syndrome. What happens is a person suffers from a stroke, trauma, brain damage, or a tumor. This new accent is developed  over night. In the video, it shows a woman that received an oral operation and woke up after speaking in a new accent new accent. Originally, she had the typical American accent, living in Oregon, but after the surgery, it seems as though she speaks with a British/Scottish accent.

Foreign Accent Syndrome is a rare phenomenon. There have been less than 100 cases since the 1940's. Although this may seem like it is just a rare occurrence, scientists have linked FAS to brain damage. Accent does not belong to a specific part of the brain. The frontal lobe, however, controls much of the final output of speech and tongue and mouth movement during speech. We can infer that the frontal lobe is largely responsible for accent in humans because of its correlation with speech output. There is no known cure for this syndrome. In some cases, it has been reported that FAS went away within several months, while in others it went on for years, or never came to an end. Speech therapy also has very minimal effect on getting the original accent back.

Foreign Accent Syndrome is a perfect example of displaying the effects of brain damage on mental and physical capabilities. Damage to a certain part of the brain can have severe or just silly effects. We can also see the direct effects a tumor or stroke in a certain part of the brain can play on future mental processing.