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Essay / Are you coming back? A look at left hemisphere aphasia
Imagine for a moment that you are alone with your loved one on a Saturday evening. While watching a movie, you start to feel strange. Suddenly you can't move your leg, or even your face. The images on the television screen double and suddenly you feel a terrible headache. Your partner seems frantic and is talking to you, but you don't understand what he or she is saying and can't respond. It's almost like you're trapped in your own body (Rodriguez). Later, you wake up in the hospital and have had a stroke. Someone speaks with a strange accent, Russian, but no one else is in the room except your loved one. This strange accent seems to come from your own mouth. The doctor tells you that Broca's area in your brain has been damaged and that you have aphasia. This specific aphasia is called foreign accent syndrome (FAS). In a recent study, foreign accent syndrome was defined as "a rare disorder characterized by the emergence of novel prosodic features that listeners perceive as a foreign accent, usually due to left hemisphere damage." or dysfunction (Christopha, de Freitasa, dos Santos, Lima, Arau´jo and Carota, 2004). So it's not really the speaker who has a new accent. In reality, it is the listener who hears the accent. Hearing a foreign accent is just a perception. Aphasia is often sensationalized and many believe that these people acquired a new accent from scratch (Stollznow, 2011). This is consistent with the belief that the loss of one sense can somehow strengthen the remaining senses to compensate for this loss (Stollznow, 2011). Aphasia is not a superhuman power; it is a manifestation of brain damage (Stollznow, 2011). The term was first used in 1919 by a German...... middle of paper ......in.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_10/d_10_p/d_10_p_lan/d_10_p_lan.html#3Christopha , DH, de Freitasa, GR, dos Santos, DP, Lima, MS, Arau´jo, AC and Carota, A. (2004). Different foreign accents perceived in a patient after a pre-Rolandic hematoma. 198-201. Hill, A. (April 20, 2010). The condition that gave me a Chinese accent. Retrieved March 29, 2011, from Guardian.co.uk: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/apr/20/foreign-accent-syndromeMorris, S. (September 14, 2010). This woman's migraine gave her a French accent. Retrieved March 29, 2011 from Guardian.co.uk: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/14/woman-awoke-migraine-french-accentRodriguez, D. (nd). Am I having a stroke? Retrieved March 29, 2011 from Everyday Health: http://www.everydayhealth.com/Stroke/am-i-having-a-Stroke.aspxStollznow, K. (2011). The accidental accent. Skeptical , 16 (2), 6-7.