Interesting Diseases: Foreign Accent Syndrome
Image Source: Blogspot
Okay, this one is just weird.
Picture yourself surviving a car accident with minor injuries. Maybe you banged your head against something when your Porsche flipped over one of the police cruisers that was chasing you after a botched diamond heist—whatever. You wake up in the hospital to find one good cop offering you a cup of water and another, edgier cop demanding you come clean about your associates. You open your mouth to ask for a lawyer. What comes out sounds like your voice, but for some reason you seem to be mocking the police with a hilarious—and picture-perfect—foreign accent. And you can’t stop doing it, no matter how many times Bad Cop hits you with a phone book.
Pictured: A bad cop. Image Source: Wikipedia
Foreign accent syndrome strikes unpredictably among people who’ve recently suffered brain injuries as a result of trauma or stroke. It can also come on suddenly after a bout of epileptic seizures. Nobody knows what, exactly, makes a person switch accents, and there’s no treatment of any kind.
People who develop this bizarre disorder have trouble expressing themselves, making and keeping friends, and not getting punched in the face for “pretending” to have caricatured racist accents, as in this video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=AR_HyIyTSZg
Next up: You very likely have it dormant inside you right now. Now if the right conditions wake it up…
