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Interesting fact!
Aug. 11th, 2021 08:43 amI listen to the podcast Oh No Ross and Carrie, which is about them trying various New Age/alternate/spiritual/alt-med/etc. movements and remedies and stuff and reporting as to whether they worked, or anything happened, etc. but that's not important to this post.
In the current episode, Carrie is talking about recent surgery she was anesthetized for. When she woke up, she couldn't speak* English, and instead could only speak (bad) Spanish.
So it turns out, as you may already know and I had a hazy idea of, that your first language (and presumably any languages you also learn early enough?) are stored in the Broca's area of your brain. Languages acquired later are stored in several other areas of your brain.
When you wake up from normal sleep, your brain wakes up in a more-or-less orderly fashion, and Broca's area comes online reasonably early. But when you wake up from anesthesia, your brain wakes up much more randomly, and since your later-acquired languages are stored in several places around the brain and your early-acquired one(s?) are in one spot, there's a reasonably high chance the secondary-language areas will wake up before Broca's area does. Hence the phenomenon of waking up from anesthesia speaking another language. Carrie speaks (and I think might be in the process of learning right now?) Spanish, but only to a small extent, hence waking up speaking bad Spanish.
Anyway, I found that fascinating.
*Technically she couldn't speak at all, as it was a tonsillectomy, but she was trying to write in English and couldn't.
In the current episode, Carrie is talking about recent surgery she was anesthetized for. When she woke up, she couldn't speak* English, and instead could only speak (bad) Spanish.
So it turns out, as you may already know and I had a hazy idea of, that your first language (and presumably any languages you also learn early enough?) are stored in the Broca's area of your brain. Languages acquired later are stored in several other areas of your brain.
When you wake up from normal sleep, your brain wakes up in a more-or-less orderly fashion, and Broca's area comes online reasonably early. But when you wake up from anesthesia, your brain wakes up much more randomly, and since your later-acquired languages are stored in several places around the brain and your early-acquired one(s?) are in one spot, there's a reasonably high chance the secondary-language areas will wake up before Broca's area does. Hence the phenomenon of waking up from anesthesia speaking another language. Carrie speaks (and I think might be in the process of learning right now?) Spanish, but only to a small extent, hence waking up speaking bad Spanish.
Anyway, I found that fascinating.
*Technically she couldn't speak at all, as it was a tonsillectomy, but she was trying to write in English and couldn't.
