Why do confused or stroke patients still manage to swear when they can barely speak otherwise?
This is from a really neat article on the history of swearing. Also, my mom works as a Director of Nursing at a Rehab/Long-Term Care facility that houses many stroke victims and Alzheimer’s patients. She is very familiar with the swearing and has also told me this in the past. Hope this helps… “The human instinct to swear is evident in Alzheimer’s disease and Tourette syndrome patients. Alzheimer’s patients suffer a neurodegenerative disorder which causes forgetfulness and, eventually, impairment of language abilities. Neuron atrophy in the frontal lobe of the brain gradually attacks the patients’ language abilities, slowly impairing their language faculties. In Alzheimer’s patients, the ability to swear remains intact much longer than other language abilities, suggesting that swearing is controlled by its own area within the brain. Similarly, Tourette syndrome patients sometimes exhibit a symptom neurologists call coprolalia, or the spontaneous, involuntary utterance of socially obj
