# Post-Stroke Tourette-Like Behavior

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-stroke-tourette-like-behavior/612998>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 16, 2012, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-stroke-tourette-like-behavior/612998 "2012-02-16T02:43:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Washoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecae2f/32.png) [@Washoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Washoe)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-stroke-tourette-like-behavior/612998/1 "2012-02-16T02:43:10Z")

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I met someone today who suffered a stroke and had for several months afterwards been unable to vocalize anything except obscenities. I’ve never heard of anything like this before. The closest analogy to this that I can think of is Sophia’s character in _The Golden Girls_, who had a stroke in the portion of the brain which controls social restraint, and therefore said whatever was on her mind with no regard to the consequences. But this wasn’t really analogous—this young woman (she’s in her mid-twenties to maybe early thirties at the most) simply couldn’t speak unless she swore. This persisted for several months, and she eventually made a complete recovery. So what happened to her brain? Is this typical of a stroke in Broca’s area?

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**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-stroke-tourette-like-behavior/612998/2 "2012-02-16T20:07:04Z")

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"FIL"s vocabulary was reduced to “goddamn” post stroke. Rather distressing to my churchy “inlaws”. Scare quote due to fact that Kevbabe and I have been living on sin for 20 plus years.

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**Author:** ![KneeSid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dec6dc/32.png) [@KneeSid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneeSid)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-stroke-tourette-like-behavior/612998/3 "2012-02-16T20:14:20Z")

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Everyone stores information in their brain differently. For example, you can have stroke patients that can sing but not speak. Sometimes the brain is able to rewire itself so that the passageways that allow one to speak, but are now cut off, can be gotten to by taking another route. The brain kind of takes a detour around the damage. It takes training and time to do this. Sometimes it can’t be done.

The younger you are the easier it is for you to retrain your brain.

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**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-stroke-tourette-like-behavior/612998/4 "2012-02-16T20:34:49Z")

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It’s actually not uncommon.

With the stroke, there is loss of cortical (voluntary) speech. The deeper limbic (‘emotion’) centres are not affected and they still send signals to produce ‘emotional’ speech, such as and especially, swearing. After a stroke, this tendency is actually heightened by the absence of competition, or inhibition, from the cortical speech centres which the stroke has damaged.