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A Foreign Speech Accent in a Case of Conversion Disorder

Objective: The aim of this paper is to report the psychiatric, neuroradiological and linguistic characteristics in a native speaker of Dutch who developed speech symptoms which strongly resemble Foreign Accent Syndrome. Background: Foreign Accent Syndrome is a rare speech production disorder in whic...

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Autores principales: Verhoeven, Jo, Mariën, Peter, Engelborghs, Sebastiaan, D’Haenen, Hugo, De Deyn, Peter
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: IOS Press 2005
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5478851/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16518013
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2005/989602
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author Verhoeven, Jo
Mariën, Peter
Engelborghs, Sebastiaan
D’Haenen, Hugo
De Deyn, Peter
author_facet Verhoeven, Jo
Mariën, Peter
Engelborghs, Sebastiaan
D’Haenen, Hugo
De Deyn, Peter
author_sort Verhoeven, Jo
collection PubMed
description Objective: The aim of this paper is to report the psychiatric, neuroradiological and linguistic characteristics in a native speaker of Dutch who developed speech symptoms which strongly resemble Foreign Accent Syndrome. Background: Foreign Accent Syndrome is a rare speech production disorder in which the speech of a patient is perceived as foreign by speakers of the same speech community. This syndrome is generally related to focal brain damage. Only in few reported cases the Foreign Accent Syndrome is assumed to be of psychogenic and/or psychotic origin. Method: In addition to clinical and neuroradiological examinations, an extensive test battery of standardized neuropsychological and neurolinguistic investigations was carried out. Two samples of the patient's spontaneous speech were analysed and compared to a 500,000-words reference corpus of 160 normal native speakers of Dutch. Results: The patient had a prominent French accent in her pronunciation of Dutch. This accent had persisted over the past eight years and has become progressively stronger. The foreign qualities of her speech did not only relate to pronunciation, but also to the lexicon, syntax and pragmatics. Structural as well as functional neuroimaging did not reveal evidence that could account for the behavioural symptoms. By contrast psychological investigations indicated conversion disorder. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge this is the first reported case of a foreign accent like syndrome in conversion disorder.
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spelling pubmed-54788512017-06-28 A Foreign Speech Accent in a Case of Conversion Disorder Verhoeven, Jo Mariën, Peter Engelborghs, Sebastiaan D’Haenen, Hugo De Deyn, Peter Behav Neurol Other Objective: The aim of this paper is to report the psychiatric, neuroradiological and linguistic characteristics in a native speaker of Dutch who developed speech symptoms which strongly resemble Foreign Accent Syndrome. Background: Foreign Accent Syndrome is a rare speech production disorder in which the speech of a patient is perceived as foreign by speakers of the same speech community. This syndrome is generally related to focal brain damage. Only in few reported cases the Foreign Accent Syndrome is assumed to be of psychogenic and/or psychotic origin. Method: In addition to clinical and neuroradiological examinations, an extensive test battery of standardized neuropsychological and neurolinguistic investigations was carried out. Two samples of the patient's spontaneous speech were analysed and compared to a 500,000-words reference corpus of 160 normal native speakers of Dutch. Results: The patient had a prominent French accent in her pronunciation of Dutch. This accent had persisted over the past eight years and has become progressively stronger. The foreign qualities of her speech did not only relate to pronunciation, but also to the lexicon, syntax and pragmatics. Structural as well as functional neuroimaging did not reveal evidence that could account for the behavioural symptoms. By contrast psychological investigations indicated conversion disorder. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge this is the first reported case of a foreign accent like syndrome in conversion disorder. IOS Press 2005 2006-02-27 /pmc/articles/PMC5478851/ /pubmed/16518013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2005/989602 Text en Copyright © 2005 Hindawi Publishing Corporation and the authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Other
Verhoeven, Jo
Mariën, Peter
Engelborghs, Sebastiaan
D’Haenen, Hugo
De Deyn, Peter
A Foreign Speech Accent in a Case of Conversion Disorder
title A Foreign Speech Accent in a Case of Conversion Disorder
title_full A Foreign Speech Accent in a Case of Conversion Disorder
title_fullStr A Foreign Speech Accent in a Case of Conversion Disorder
title_full_unstemmed A Foreign Speech Accent in a Case of Conversion Disorder
title_short A Foreign Speech Accent in a Case of Conversion Disorder
title_sort foreign speech accent in a case of conversion disorder
topic Other
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5478851/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16518013
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2005/989602
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