Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Gran Kay Russell goes to bed with migraine and wakes with French accent

Kay RussellA grandmother who went to bed suffering from a migraine was amazed to wake up speaking with a French accent.

Kay Russell, 49, is now left with a voice that is unrecognisable to family and friends.

Doctors say she has Foreign Accent Syndrome, a condition which damages the part of the brain that controls speech and word formation.

Mrs Russell has suffered from migraines for 20 years.

Their effects are normally limited to temporarily paralysing her limbs and causing slurred speech.

But since January 4 this year, she has not spoken with her natural accent.

After one bad migraine, she was left with slurred speech for two weeks and made an appointment to have an MRI scan and see a neurologist.

Then one day she simply woke up with a French accent.

'As a sufferer of this syndrome you are not trying to speak in an accent, it is a speech impediment,' Mrs Russell said.

'Whatever accent you hear, it is in the ears of the listener.'

She is most commonly mistaken for French or Eastern European, but she said the syndrome goes deeper than her voice.

'My facial muscle movements are different, the inclination is different and the pronunciation.

'It also affects my hands and makes me write with a foreign accent. For example, I say peoples not people and that is how I would write it.'

Mrs Russell, from Bishop Cleeve in Gloucestershire, misses out function words such as 'a', 'of' and 'to' and cannot put on any other accent.

She has revealed her plight in a bid to raise awareness of the condition.

Foreign Accent Syndrome can last for days, weeks, months, years or forever and there is currently no known cure.

Mrs Russell said: 'A lot of people come up and say "what a lovely voice you have".

'You lose your identity and an awful lot about yourself. I feel like I come across as a different person.'

via Gran Kay Russell goes to bed with migraine and wakes with French accent | Mail Online.

20 comments:

Cheng said...

I think my wife has this. She speaks with a completely incomprehensible double dutch accent.

Patrick said...

I read that Foreign Accent Syndrome is a bit erroneous because what's really going on is witnesses interpreting a brain-damaged person's voice as a foreign accent. Slurring? Mumbling her vowels? She's Norwegian!
Or drunk.

Cheng said...

You're suggesting, perhaps, that Kay could have her french accented (not French speaking though) spirit exorcised? Her normally dominant spirit has, in some way, lost the struggle to retain control of the human shell which they all co-habit.
Yep Sepp, that's way too foreign for me.
The only spiritual thing about humans is there ability to come up with bizarre notions to explain things they don't understand.

Sepp said...

I don't think I suggested exorcism.

The concept of spirit inhabiting a body might be foreign, but we better deal with it.

That particular reality is not going to go away just because we close our eyes to any such possibility.

In any case... the lady seems not to be too unhappy with her new situation.

Cheng said...

Reality? What reality are you speaking of?What hard, unequivocal evidence do you have of spiritual infestation of the human body?
I'm with the Dara O'Briain school of teaching. All clairvoyents, spiritualists, priests, fortune tellers, astrologers et al of this ilk, should be put in a large sack and beaten with big sticks till they see sense and stop perpetuating this bollocks.

Ann said...

Now, now, Cheng, aren't we being a bit extreme? Sounds almost (James) Randistic to me. So, what's your take on the field of parapsychology, which includes the likes of Susan Blackmore as well as Dean Radin?

(Oh, sorry to read about your wife. It's curious you describe her speech as "double Dutch," a phrase that arose during an era when the Brits and the Dutch were less than fond of each other. Got something against the Dutch, too?)

Cheng said...

Well done Ann. Parapsychologists - get in the fecking sack. Susan Blackmore, I note, is no longer in the field. Presumably, she has done her time in the sack. This sort of thing is a hedge better for governments without conviction. They give a few million of tax payers money, just in case there's something in it. Scientists run with it because it is undoudtedly interesting, but of course, never come back with anything concrete. They only turn up for the next round of grants and to give long winded talks on how close they are to achieving.
It's this and all the other aforementioned asides that keeps human progress in the slow lane, preying on peoples fears, prejudices and superstitions.

I have nothing against the Dutch. A truly wonderful and enlightened nation. Indeed, my employer is Dutch. I have no idea of the origin of the term "Double Dutch", but you are probably right. The Brits and Dutch didn't always see eye to eye, even when we had Dutch Kings and Queens on the throne. It's a term that has fallen into British colloquial history and is used to describe anything that is not immediately clear, or just total nonsense.

Ann said...

Yeah, it's British humor/insult as only the British can do: "Dutch concert" refers to a state of chaos or pandemonium; the well-loved expression in the States "going Dutch," or "Dutch treat," meaning sharing the expenses or each pays his/her own fare.

But, I think parapsychology has made some progress in the last 100 years, although it seems many people have taken up the extreme skeptical side of the discussion, which has had far more media attention. It's like the global warming issue, scientists are not the best at PR, and suffer as a consequence.

Cheng said...

On behalf of the British people, I would like to apologise for our sense of humour. From Benny Hill to Little Britain, I am so sorry.

Ann, I do honestly try to keep an open mind about most things. But all my life I've been told things are fact that simply don't stand up to scrutiny. Religion, the paranormal, santa claus, UFO's, you name it. Not a single shred of hard evidence has been offered, to me anyway, to back it up.
Now's your chance. What progress has been made in parapsychology in the last century, that isn't heresay or can be explained in quite normal terms.

Sepp said...

Dara O'Brian might be funny as a stand-up comedian, and he certainly has an agenda! Good luck to you ...

Cheng said...

But you still have nothing to help persuade me otherwise?

Sepp said...

No, I won't try. You've got your mind well made up already.

Cheng said...

Like I said. You have nothing!

Xeno said...

Charlie Tart taught that non believers in one experiment missed more than they should, statistically.

Spirits: I've seen a few and still don't believe they are the immortal immaterial essences of deceased people. Misinterpretations by my brain of shadows, insects, and daydreams... Or perhaps people playing games in military stealth suits.

Ann said...

I found this obit by Charles T. Tart where he talks about the original creator of the believer/non-believer experiment, which has been replicated numerous times (even by Susan Blackmore, I've read elsewhere):

Pioneering Parapsychologist Gertrude Schmeidler Has Died

Dr. Charles T. Tart on May 5th, 2009

.... Gertrude Schmeidler, died last month (1912-2009). ....

Gertrude made one of the most important discoveries ever in parapsychology, one with strong spiritual implications and one which I think none of the spiritual traditions knows about, for while it's something that can happen in everyday life, it's pretty much unobservable except under laboratory conditions. She gave many classes of students ESP tests, guessing at concealed cards, but, before giving or scoring the tests, she had students fill out questionnaires that asked, among other things, whether they believed in ESP.

When she analyzed the results separately for the believers – the "sheep" – and the non-believers – the "goats" – she found a small, but significant difference. The sheep got more right than you would expect by chance guessing, they were occasionally using ESP. The goats, on the other hand, got significantly fewer right than you would expect by chance.

Think of it this way. If you were asked to guess red or black with ordinary playing cards, no feedback until you'd done the whole deck, you would average about 50% correct by chance. If you got 100% correct, you don't need statistics to know that would be astounding. But if you got 0%? Just as astounding!

The sheep thought they could do it, they got "good" scores, they were happy. The goats knew there was no ESP, nothing to get, they got poor scores, they were happy, that "proved" their belief. These were not people who were sophisticated enough about statistics to know that scoring below chance could be significant….

Many other experimenters replicated this effect over the years.
The only way I've ever been able to understand it is to think that the goats occasionally used ESP, but on an unconscious level, to know what the next card was and then their unconscious, acting in the service of their conscious belief system, influenced them to call anything but the correct one. The goats used a "miracle" to support their belief that there were no such things as miracles….

Talk about living in samsara, in a state of illusion!



http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/archives/103

Cheng said...

Ann, thank you for your considered reply. I don't think I have decided anything. I try not to take anything at face value, so I suppose I do need convincing. I guess I am predisposed to lean towards the logical explanation side of things rather than make huge leaps of faith, but that is how it should be, surely.
The brain, I think it's agreed, is the most complex organic structure we know. It grows organically from an imperfect blue print. It is so complex, that every one is probably unique. Like the most complex machines, I doubt that it runs at 100% efficiency ever, and is made worse by stress, tiredness, drugs, alcohol, pollution etc. Sometimes this is obvious in the most spectacular ways, but usually this is almost undetectable. A twitch of a muscle, a whine in the ear or a flash in the eye. I've experienced all of these and Deja Vu and feelings of foreboding etc. etc. Don't you think the more likely cause is a brain hiccup? As I've said before in other posts, I would love for these things to be true. To be able to talk to my dead relatives, to foresee the future, to have a book turn it's own pages as I read, and on and on, but there seems to be no consistent proof of any of it.
I don't won't to tie you down, but you said you had an episode of a few milliseconds in which you saw something that must have been quite graphic and distinct, but I would suggest the brain needs at least a few 10's of milliseconds to even be conscious that something occured. If the period of time was longer, I imagine anybody with you would immediately notice your reaction to it.
I haven't read Radin's work, but I will now as a special concsession to you. Unfortunately, the waters are muddied by some scientists offering fraudulently obtained data, and there have been some fairly high profile cases of this. The science of it is further sullied by the charlatans, profiteers and showmen that haunt the subject. So the "genuine" parapsychologists are definitely working uphill and I sympathise with them. But I can't help feeling that they so want it to be true and that they aren't wasting their time, that they jump on any tiny positive result and laud it a complete success and undeniable fact. Shouldn't eperimental evidence be reproducable by anybody under the same conditions, anywhere with the same result? That doesn't seem to be the case with parapsychology. Why can't psychics, under the same conditions, produce consistant results? So it starts to move away from science and into the black arts.
I will read and try to stay objective, but the balance has been swinging the wrong way for a century now.

Xeno said...

Thanks for this. So, what have the skeptics said about this psi-missing effect?

Cheng said...

Ann, you presume too much. That my normal state of sobriety is 'sober' and that I am quick witted enough to imagine near instantaneous images in my mind.
However, I'm not sure I fully agree with your reasoning. The brain (mind) isn't that great at concentrating on more than one thing at a time (bearing in mind I'm talking from a male perspective and walking and chewing gum don't come easy). I think you are right about us having a whirl wind of thoughts in our heads that mean little and don't interfere with our interaction with the environment. But when we concentrate, say someone asks us to imagine a satellite orbiting a moon, the brain becomes focussed. We start to ignore those aimless thoughts and our perception of the passage of time is also affected. I don't think I do get a near instantaneous picture. It probably takes a second or more to build that picture to be something clear, as I decipher your instructions. A second is a long time in human consciousness. If you were talking to someone and you stopped in mid flow for a second, they would immediately notice it. If I had a picture book and I told you I was going to open it for exactly 1/10 second and show you a picture, you would be on your guard and ready. You wouldn't be thinking about much else. When I flashed the picture, I suggest there wouldn't be sufficient time to get all the information. You would see the colours and the general shapes, but not much detail. But it took your attention and you'd remember it above all else that was happening around you at that moment.
Of course, I have no idea how you percieved your visions, but I imagine they would have to be of long enough duration to be remembered in some detail. They would really grab your attention and may possibly shock you. That, I'm guessing, would alert people around you, if there are any. When you had them, did you tell someone or note them down? I guess I'm having trouble understanding how you had a distinct, focussed vision that was still part of the whirl wind. Is it possible, and please don't be offended, that they didn't become distinct visions until after you witnessed the event?

I looked up the Swedenborg fire and it is a strange one indeed and very difficult to explain any other way. I am, of course, bound to say that it happened over 250 years ago and there must be a minute possibility that the records aren't absolutely accurate. He also had some rather odd beliefs, which immediately harms any genuine accounts.

I started to read a bit of Radin's work. He has rather taken it upon himself to defend psi against skeptics, rather than continue his work and prove it with out doubt and so shut them up forever. I note though, that some former eminent skeptics have (at least partially) been persuaded otherwise and are calling for more research.
I'll read on...

Ann said...

Also, Cheng, if you're interested and have not seen it, Dean Radin website is below. I think it's quite remarkable that he openly discusses topics with his commentators. Something others authors, I'm sure, wouldn't dare do. One of his recent posts he talks about the Ganzfeld experiments:

September 13, 2010
Ganzfeld telepathy example

http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2010/09/ganzfeld-telepathy-example.html

Sam said...

I'm really starting to like you, Cheng.