In 2002 My wife suffered a cardiac arrest. She was in a coma for one week. After arising from the coma she was talking to the nurses using all three of the languages that she is fluent in. While the cardiac arrest did leave her with dementia, she can still speak her native Italian, the dialect from her area ( which is another another language entirely, and although I speak Italian as a second language I cannot speak or understand her dialect, She is also fluent in English.

Whats the "wrong" language?

This story provides confirmation that we still have much to learn about cognitive development and the intricacies of the brain itself.

N.E. Nelson, I hope that your wife has recovered fairly well. All too often, serious cardiac problems cause brain dysfunctions that didn't exist before.

It's like Stargate SG-1 when Jack was only able to speak Ancient. Quick someone call the Asgard.

What can't be true, though, is the claim that the coma gave the girl fluency that she didn't have before. "I looked on the Web and saw comments that she recovered perfect German," Paradis said. "This cannot be the case. If she recovered German to the point that she could communicate well, that's fine. That's the kind of thing you would expect."

I don't agree with this. It could easily have been that during her coma she was able to untangle all that she had studied, and therefore, more capable of using the knowledge when she woke. It is also possible that she was able to decipher key components of the German language that differed from her own, and was able to link the two.

In1987, while chaperoning a trip to Germany, one of my students was involved in a serious car accident, which left him in a coma with severe brain swelling.  Three weeks later, when he awoke from the coma, he could only speak German.  He couldn't communicate with his parents, who had flown in from the US after the accident, without the use of an interpretor.  The English came back relatively quickly (as the brain swelling went down). 

The article describes exactly what the doctors told us then: his knowledge of German was stored in a different part of his brain than his knowledge of his first language, English. I've had many people not believe me when I've told them this story!

By the way, my student made a complete recovery.

"What can't be true, though, is the claim that the coma gave the girl fluency that she didn't have before."

I also disagree with this statement. When my daughter suffered from a pyschotic break, she started signing in American Sign Language so well that both her psychiatrist and her psychologist asked me, "When did she learn sign language???" She could never really sign before, although she had observed her friends, who sign very well, and had picked up a few words herself. Who knows - she may not have been making any sense in sign language, but the signs were flowing fast and free, and she looked like an absolute pro.

She also started tap dancing like Fred Astaire. Believe me - I am her mother and I love my daughter dearly, but in all honesty she was just never that good a tap dancer. She had learned how to tap in the 4th grade, and had taken a class or two in high school, but that was all. So somehow, when all the conscious restraints were lifted, as her brain went through this "firestorm" (the psychiatrist's term for her experience) she was briefly able to be really really good at things that she normally wasn't that good at. Anyways, days later as her meds started working and she came back to reality, she was never able to do those things again, but the remarkable memories of when this all happened will stay with me for the rest of my life.

How can the media ignore the real cause of this....this is nothing less than a case of reincarnation!

Now they'll have to sit down with her to see if she was one of Hitler's top people...or Hitler himself. This could be a very prolonged and complicated process, but there should be plenty of followers...especially at the supermarket checkout.....

I know a gentleman who had a stroke. Upon his recovery, he had lost all speaking knowledge of his native language, Farsi. His English is quite good, but the stroke did damage to other parts of his system, and any speech was still difficult. When he traveled back to his Middle East home, he had extreme difficulty communicating with his siblings. He has never recovered his Farsi, but with vast amounts of therapy, he's able to verbally communicate in English. He had a double whammy, but the human spirit is a wonderful thing.

I hope that all who have suffered this kind of debilitating brain injury recovery their language/speech skills. It's a very difficult handicap. Life is hard enough as it is.

Why shouldn't she be speaking "perfect" German? Don't we technically "remember" everything that we hear and read on some level? If she was exposed to perfect German while studying it, couldn't her brain activate this stored information, even though she hadn't consciously reached this point before her accident?

what language does she text in?

Here again we observe what many neurologists and neurosurgeons have known for a long time. The human brain when seen as analagous to a computer has no problem with regard to MEMORY or STORAGE of said memory. The problem has always been one of RETRIEVAL.

Still, it is nonetheless amazing. Now, if we could just figure out a way to retrieve data on DEMAND in a foolproof manner - we'd ALL be straight "A" students. We simply don't yet have access to the CODE.

I suspect the man upstairs wants us to figure that out for ourselves and so we must STUDY.

science, and therefore scientists, have much to learn about how the brain functions, and how the mind functions, as well.

i do not beleive that a scientist may state that it "could not be true" that the girl speaks fluent german now.

i state this based on my own personal experience. i have a german daughter in law, but never spoke another language, other than english. one day i experienced being able to understand her fully and without going through any mental translation as she spoke in her native tongue of german. this was not something that i tried to make happen, it just did. the experience has not repeated itself. what i do know now is that the brain is very intricate, that we do not know the fullness of its capacity, and that we are much more gifted than we may imagine.

i suggest keeping an open mind.

in aloha,

anolalni

Ana Karina Rotteh Amukon Paporo Manto!

Hey! I Just remember to talk in the Caribbean aborigenes native tongue: Karinah!

This means: " We Are the Caribbeans, uber alles!

Fans of LOST... now you know it's a real condition and not a stupid plot device.

Did she also go to the Dark Side of The Force?

If the brain was so simple

That we could understand it.

We would be so simple

That we couldn't.

Emerson Pugh

My Wife emerged from her 9 day coma after a massive brain hemorrhage with a trach in her throat which prevented her actually speaking out loud, it was a whisper or lip reading, her first words were "Did you do the dishes yet?" a month later when she could breathe on her own & the Trach was removed she LOST the ability to speak, she knew the words but could not say them due to damage in the Warnieke's/Brocha's area of her brain. Speech therapy & 6 months before she could say my name but in a year she had totally recovered.

Years ago, in the 1930's my Aunt was involved in a "roll-over" accident, in which she suffer some period of coma-like state, when she arose from this state, she spoke fluent French, having no knowledge of it before hand. She put this newly found language to good use, by teaching University level french, to students; at a local college, for years to come...

My cousin went to have a tooth pulled, then a few days later she passed out at her gratuation. She went to the hospital and when she woke up she is speaking spanish. She has never spoken spanish before, but she is now fluid in the language. The doctors have had interpreters in and she is in fact speaking spanish. When she tries to speak english, it is just like she is trying to mimic what we are saying, but she doesn't actually understand the language anymore. This is very tramatic, but the doctors say that there is nothing that they can do and don't see anything wrong with her. Right now we don't know what to do. This seems so impossible but we are seeing 1st hand that this is possible.