AFTER PROSTATE CANCER DIAGNOSIS, NORTH CAROLINA MAN GETS UNCONTROLLABLE IRISH ACCENT

The human brain is a never-ending mystery for us to explore and remained mystified by.  The latest example of this is news of an American man in North Carolina who developed an uncontrollable Irish accent after a diagnosis of prostate cancer.  The American man, who is in is 50’s, had never visited Ireland.  This unusual affliction of a random and foreign accent manifesting in someone is called foreign accent syndrome, or FAS.  The afflicted man had lived in England briefly in his 20’s and had distant family members in Ireland.  But before his cancer diagnosis, he hadn’t displayed any accent besides his natural American.

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UNCONTROLLABLE IRISH ACCENT ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF RARE FOREIGN ACCENT SYNDROME

Reports of this man’s uncontrollable accent aren’t entirely unique, though it remains extremely unusual.  It is the first case of FAS in a patent with prostate cancer and only the third involving cancer of any malignancy.  The uncontrollable Irish accent manifested roughly 20 months into the man’s cancer treatment.  And when it did, it was uncontrollable and was consistent in all settings.  In other words, the man simply woke up one day with a strong Irish brogue and it never went away, despite the social setting.  The man spoke with it until his death several months later.

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IRSH ACCENT ONSET LIKELY CAUSED BY CHEMOTHERAPY TREATMENT AFFECTING BRAIN

The cancer continued to spread despite the chemotherapy the man received, which involved multifocal brain metastasis and a likely paraneoplastic ascending paralysis, which killed him.  Researchers now suspect that the uncontrollable Irish accent was caused by a condition called paraneoplastic neurological disorder, or PDN.  This is when cancer patients’ own immune systems attack parts of their brain, muscles and spinal cord.  Some other examples of foreign accent syndrome include an English woman who suffered a stroke in 2006 and developed a Jamaican accent.  One of the first reported cases was a young Norwegian woman in 1941, when she developed a German accent after being hit by bomb shrapnel.  She became an outcast and suspected Nazi spy.