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Business-Emu-6923 t1_j67366n wrote

Reply to comment by tvieno in TIL about foreign accent syndrome. This is a very rare (~100 cases worldwide) but real medical condition where people abruptly begin speaking in a foreign accent following head trauma like a bad migraine, accident, or stroke. by veety

No it is genuinely a foreign accent, like if you were doing a funny voice as a kind of racist impersonation or something.

Don’t laugh - it can be genuinely traumatic for people with this who can only talk in a fake voice.

The brain processes language differently if you are doing a funny voice as an impersonation. Sometimes brain injury, like aphasia after a stroke, can stop the usual speech pathways from functioning. The brain finds a work-around by sending your speech via the “funny foreign voice” processing centres. Weird, rare, but it happens.

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