Prosody is variations in melody, pauses, vocal quality, stresses, and accents. Prosody affects our expressions in speech, our attitude of speech and personality to a great extent. Dysprosody is also called Psuedo-foreign dialect syndrome. Dysprosody refers to elimination of one or more prosody functions in an individual. prosody functions may be complimented a little or may be eliminated fully.
In general, people with dysprosody show difficulties in pitch and/or timing. A Dysprosodic is capable of picturizing what to say into language and vocalizes whatever he intends to say. But the accent in which he speaks in not his own. This condition is one of the most rarest neurological speech disorder. So very little information is available. Patients suffering from Dysprosody are generally found to have never been to any such country from which their accent has been derived. This is still remaining as a puzzle to all neuro-specialists and scientists. No facts are available yet to clear doubts about how brain damage can change patient’s accent, which the patient was never exposed to.
Causes:
Neurological damage like – brain tumors, vascular damages, strokes, traumas and head injury are common attributes which can cause this condition. There are no evidences if gender, ethnicity, genetics or age affect the onset of Dysprosody.
Symptoms:
Alterations in intensity, timing, rhythm, repetitions and pitch adjustment are common. This affects person’s speech. However, no effects is found in the person’s personality, intelligence, Sensory organs and motor skills. But their grammar and emotional activity may be affected. Most interesting symptom happens where a person even speaks the general grammatical errors which is common in the new accent. Occurrence of seizures are also seen in few. This condition lasts for different durations in different persons; i.e.-from months to years.
Dysprosody In The Brain:
Long ago it was believed that the right hemisphere may be responsible in controlling prosody. But later it was known that left hemisphere is responsible for language and organization of speech. So confusion still exists. Few scientists say that rhythm and timing of speech is controlled by our left hemisphere. And pitch control, pause and prolongation are related to emotion, so they are organized in the right hemisphere.
History:
This condition was documented by Pierre Marie, a French neurologist, in 1907 for the first time. This was followed by Arnold Pick, a German neurologist in 1919, who documented it next.
Treatment:
Speech Therapy has been found the most effective way. But there are also evidences which states that people have gained their native accent back with due course of time. Since the portion of the brain which is responsible in the occurrence is not yet confirmed along with the mechanism of occurrence. So no medication is yet developed.
