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Impaired laryngeal voice production in a patient with foreign accent syndrome |
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| Authors: | Yasuhisa Sakurai Kenji Itoh Keiko Sai Seitetsu Lee Shoko Abe Yasuo Terao |
| Institution: | 1. Department of Neurology, Mitsui Memorial Hospital, Tokyo, Japanysakurai-tky@umin.ac.jp;3. Department of Artificial Organs and Medical Device Creation, National Institute of Sensory Organs, Tokyo, Japan;4. Department of Urology, Tokyo Women’s Medical University, Tokyo, Japan;5. Department of Cardiology, Mitsui Memorial Hospital, Tokyo, Japan;6. Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Mitsui Memorial Hospital, Tokyo, Japan;7. Department of Neurology, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan |
| Abstract: | We report a Japanese-speaking monolingual woman who developed foreign accent syndrome (FAS) following an infarction in the precentral and premotor cortices (Brodmann Area 6) at and around the inferior frontal sulcus. Her speech sounded Chinese or Korean to our bilingual coauthor who speaks Chinese and Japanese. Quantitative acoustic analyses of words and sentences showed that pitch (fundamental frequency variation) and intensity variances appeared lowered and fully voiced glottal pulses were reduced. These findings suggest laryngeal dysfunction that contributes to the unusual speech production in a case of FAS. This may be caused by damage to a restricted area of the motor and premotor cortices that controls laryngeal function. |
| Keywords: | apraxia of speech precentral gyrus pitch intensity glottal pulse larynx area |