Foreign Accent Syndrome: The medical mystery leaving analysts stumped | 60 Minutes Australia

at first it sounds so unbelievable it's laugh out loud funny but this is certainly no joke it's an extremely rare and baffling condition that affects the way people speak one moment they're completely normal the next they're talking in a thick foreign accent but instead of scratching their heads in bewilderment scientists are now trying to unlock the secrets of this strange syndrome by using incredible technology to map what's going on inside the brain it's very welcome news for those who are struggling to recognize the sound of their own voice [Music] when i look in the mirror i see me but when i open my mouth i sound different imagine suddenly developing an accent from a country you've never even visited i woke up with a narrow sounding accent [Music] it's so bizarre you'd be forgiven for questioning if this could possibly be real the australian accent that i have known for a very long time was just wiped out overnight but for angie n this is her new reality can i please get a strawberry milkshake and some potato fries with some extra ketchup yeah sure the sound of her own voice has been somewhat amusing of late do you get many people asking where you're from when they hear you talk you know sometimes people they they do a double take like you know oh yeah she just sounds different people ask me you know oh so where are you from and i'm like oh you know i actually grew up here in brisbane angie has caught many a friend off guard but her weird new accent can stump the odd stranger too where would you say angie's from when you hear her speak oh i'm not too sure keep speaking i can't quite tell um well i am looking forward to digging into those large fries with the ketchup and the milkshake sound a little bit irish maybe maybe well how irish are you um i've never been to ireland in my life really never yeah i can see it coming through very thick now it's very prominent while she tries to laugh it off adjusting to this new voice has been tough for angie when did you first notice your accent change um it was on the 28th of april i'll never forget that day i was just singing as i do and all of a sudden all these voices and sounds were coming out of my mouth that's not my own and i'm like hang on a second am i am i dreaming about this angie has now been diagnosed with a condition known as foreign accent syndrome or fast it's a medical mystery thought to be caused by psychological or neurological damage to the brain so rare there have only ever been about 100 cases likely in deck wake up sure the last one nine years ago 60 minutes met some of them including british woman sarah colwill whose accent changed following a severe migraine she said no you sound like you can work in a chinese restaurant she said yeah you look good work in the local china house or something and australian cindy hastings who developed an eastern european accent after starting new epilepsy medication yes okay i speak a fun accent so it makes sense but for goodness sake what is fun accent syndrome 28 year old angie is the latest case to join this strange club she developed her irish accent 10 days after having her tonsils removed but whether this is the cause we'll never know my brain has located my voice to a different country without a visa i spent the whole day yesterday freaking out it's a strange place to look for answers beauty billabong but so perplexed by her condition angie turned to social media platform tiktok to document her journey so it is quite a struggle yes i know that i need medical attention and help what was it that made you want to go on tick-tock so at first my friends they send us videos we don't believe you you know and i was like okay i'll make a video for you and they're like oh my goodness it's true can your friends tell me that my accent is from a cool part of ireland or not while many of angie's followers did believe her the intrigue also brought out the skeptics and very quickly trolls took hold this is trash it's fake bro this is the biggest load of accusing her of faking her newfound accent for attention fake you're definitely putting that leprechaun accent on attention seeking at its finest i call could you fake it i think if i was a very good voice actor i can but you know it doesn't benefit me in any way yeah what does happen when you try to speak with an aussie twang it sounds like a train wreck does it try me um hey sheila i'm just going down to the bottle oh do you want me to grab anything for the snags on the barbie yeah you're right that doesn't sound right no not at all i do not sound like you [Laughter] [Music] as you're about to hear in this customer service call okay so ange this is a recording you took before your voice changed yeah i did until recently angie sounded like a completely different person i'm just calling to cancel my membership and i was just wondering for the monthly payments that i've paid uh will the remainder be refunded as per like pro rata what state we come from queensland when you say queensland there that's the third income aussie accent when you listen back to recordings of how you used to sound what goes through your mind it's a really hard feeling to describe because it's like you know that that was me people don't really know what they've lost until it's gone all right thank you very much for your help bye foreign accent syndrome is a legitimate condition it's described as a person's speech changing so that it sounds as though they're speaking in a different accent to their habitual accent does angie have foreign accent syndrome yes you're able to diagnose her with that condition well she is a person who is speaking with accented speech that is not her native accent so now i'm just going to get you to sing a song that we all know which is happy birthday determined to find out why she suddenly sounds like she's from the land of the leprechaun angie has traveled to the university of sydney to undergo a rigorous assessment with speech pathologist professor kyrie ballard happy birthday dear johnny happy birthday to you during the two-hour analysis she put angie through a range of tests to monitor the consistency in her articulation here is the potato it's the word potato and also the intonation pattern sounds quite irish after analyzing her session with angie professor ballard is sharing what she's discovered here is a potato and it sounds very irish and it sounds irish because we have a an a sound and her production is more a potato potato feet professor balad says fasts can be triggered by psychological or neurological damage likening the brain to a computer take bowel bit so a computer is hardware and software and when you have a stroke or parkinson's disease part of the hardware is damaged and you have your software your programs have to adjust and do the best they can and usually we can't compensate completely so we're left with a speech disorder which may sometimes sound like a foreign accent in angie's case we haven't been able to find anything wrong with the hardware so we're going to say then there's something wrong with the software as rare as the condition is angie is not alone in her unusual battle lots of people think i must have just come here to australia she may sound like an international tourist but don't be fooled they don't believe you do they no they don't it's weird having people constantly ask you if you're where you're from in ireland or scotland even and to say no i'm from the northern territory and i've never been to ireland before two years ago 32 year old kate baggs suffered a hemoplegic migraine causing paralysis in her body and face for almost two months when she finally regained movement she gained an irish accent too in the middle of a sentence my accent just shifted and it was the strangest feeling mid-sentence literally mid-sentence and i kind of went that sounds really odd i wonder what that is was it a bit of a novelty for you early on a little bit but mostly it was just a bit confusing i think i never realized how you sound is actually really quite a part of your identity and when it it changed it was quite difficult to cope with that for a while um but after probably after a couple of months i just decided look this is gonna be me for a while just accept it it's so pretty here it's a bit cold but it's very pretty with the support of her mum kate has come to terms with her new accent so pretty in the opera house i've only seen it a few times in my life but it's been tough being out of the ordinary there are so few people in the world who have foreign accent syndrome are you looking forward to meeting angie yeah i really i'm looking forward to meeting angie and i don't think there are a whole lot of people who have been bestowed an irish accent with this syndrome so i'm i'm actually quite excited to help her through what i went through hi [Music] how are you doing today angie yen and kate baggs are meeting for the first time two of there us there is more of this i promise i really do promise oh you sound like me these two australian women have something very unusual in common they both woke up one day sounding irish it's a rare condition known as foreign accent syndrome or fess it's just the luck of the draw we both picked a four-leaf clover as horrible as it is for you to have had this happen it's been a blessing for me because it's proved that i'm not making it up no for angie this emotional meeting has brought her a step closer to finding some solace so far navigating this strange new world of fast has not been easy i think the answers are here somewhere in this journey we just have to look in the right place [Music] are you going there oh i'm just a bit nervous yeah yeah i haven't done one like this before as part of her journey she's come to sydney to try to learn why she sounds like she's actually from dublin it's about 15 minutes makes lots of noise just have to keep really still for the scan okay first up she has a functional mri brain scan so the cutting edge software called omniscient can measure her neurological activity the data is dissected and crunched down into a grid that looks like a crossword puzzle where scientists are able to pinpoint neurological messages black and white squares represent normal function while red squares highlight overactive pathways and blue squares show areas that aren't firing enough what we want to do now is to look at how the brain is functioning shortly after the scan neuroscientist dr michael sugrue is able to show angie what's happening inside her brain now most of your networks are stone cold normal it's one of those normal scans you see but that's your language system and so all the reds and blues are different parts of the language system those areas i showed you that are over firing together so those red bits in an ordinary person would be white yeah you're not supposed to have more than one or two squares at most it's the first time this technology has been used on a patient with foreign accent syndrome and the results are striking that's the problem and there is something wrong with there it is so what does that mean well the answer is we don't know you're the first person we've ever seen this in and probably one of the first people in the world but we do know that we have an objective proof that you know you're not faking it there it is oh angie you're right you weren't expecting to hear that no no [Music] what are you thinking um well on one hand i'm i feel relieved that i now have objective proof to people that i am not faking this this is not me but on the other hand i have more questions um am i with all these things going on my head why did this happen and am i ever going to get back to my old self we don't know and we don't necessarily know what the path forward for it is that's at the edge of science but for the first time we actually can see it which is a lot closer to an answer than you ever were before what was your reaction when you saw the results of angie scan at first you get excited say that's it and then you have to be a scientist and say okay well let's look at everything else and then less temporary enthusiasm it's always a little different than you think and this one was the most extreme language you know network i've ever seen what does that tell you it certainly suggests that there's something objectively different about how her language system is working than someone else who does not have a problem like this [Music] like angie kate baggs has been desperate to know more about her fasts she'd previously had multiple tests and scans but specialists couldn't find any neurological cause so she's decided to undergo the same experimental examination as angie incredibly dr mike sugru finds a similar pattern of abnormal activity in her brain although it is less severe than angie's he believes that's because kate has had the condition for much longer and given this is happening inside of areas of the language system that are talking to each other incorrectly it's you know a reasonable guess this has something to do with why your speaking has changed over time having something say that there is something that's going on that they can visually see and actually prove it's it's a relief it's welcome news yeah it really is for all having someone saying that hey ang your speech center is not normal if anything it's highly abnormal and we can see that it was just a moment of i guess euphoria here is a banana best of all the imaging of her brain has given angie hope that one day she could find her old voice again here is the banana speech pathologist professor kiri ballard believes it is possible there were a couple of tasks that i gave her to do that were designed to see if she would slip back into an australian accent and she did she did she did so she reverted back to her originally very briefly yeah okay so her australian accent's not a lost cause no no it's there and so i think that's a good indicator that she would respond to some guided uh practice and and exercises to to help her get back to the australian accent cheers to your first guiness [Music] coming to terms with foreign accent syndrome is hard for angie yen but meeting kate baggs is certainly helping to hear how she sounds like me i was like oh my gosh there's two of us now i found my village you know now while this pair might sound like they belong in an irish pub well apparently we're drinking the local brew but i don't really like it angie and kate are still as aussie as they come okay well this is a true test to see if you're irish how quickly can you down this oh no not at all count me out hello i'm sarah arbo thanks for watching 60 minutes australia subscribe to our channel now for brand new stories and exclusive clips every week and don't miss out on our extra minute segments and full episodes of 60 minutes on ninenow.com.eu and the nine now app

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 2,120,118

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Tom Steinfort, Sarah Abo, karl stefanovic, 60Mins, #60Mins, foreign accent syndrome, fas, different, accent, brain, trauma, strange, neurological, science, medical, mystery, medical mystery, australian, irish

Id: x18AQT6yKGg

Length: 18min 24sec (1104 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/floorclip]

deres more to oiland dan dis

[u/nemoomen]

I feel like it does make sense though, accents come from not being able to differentiate some sounds because those differentiations aren't important in the home language. So a brain injury can just cause confusion between those sounds.

And I assume when it is not an accent similar to an existing one they just call it a speech impediment or something, but when it does sound like French or whatever they call it Foreign Accent Syndrome.

[u/Alternative_Ad_3636]

She sounded American at first speaking with a flat english accent but then when she talks about the French fries she lays the Irish accent thickly.

[u/hazpat]

She seems to waver in and out of it. Similar to if she was faking it.

[u/TheRevolutionaryArmy]

I remember watching something similar to this a while ago, some white lady woke up sounding with a Chinese accent and that was just bloody brilliant haha

[u/diggels]

Honestly this sounds more English, like a Jordy or a Scouser accent.

BTW - Ireland 🇮🇪 as the land of Leprechauns is as friendly as saying as Australia - land of British Texans :)

[u/LouisLaBoy]

Fraudulent nonsense!

[u/Mogadodo]

She got brain damage and woke up with an Irish accent. LOL.

[u/C_G_Walker]

are we sure those spots firing up on the brain scan are not indicating someone is actively faking an accent? I mean a control scan would be nice.