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From: Jean Sawyer
Date: 11 Oct 2012
Time: 13:59:42 -0500
Remote Name: 138.87.170.49
Hi Ari, you have posed a great question and one that researchers have been grappling with for a very long time. Soo-Eun Chang from Michigan State University did a study of school age children who stutter when she and I were students at the University of Illinois. She found that these children had structural differences in their brains as compared to children who did not stutter. Specifically, they had less gray matter in left speech motor planning areas, and less white matter connectivity between auditory and speech motor areas. She is now working to image younger children, so we'll look forward to finding out more in the future. A recent summary of neuroimaging studies by Deryk Beal at Boston University pointed to speech processing differences in brains of preschool children who stutter. More research needs to be done, but there is a body of evidence pointing to organic differences in brain functioning in stuttering, even at early ages. And I do believe that living with stuttering for a number of years results in changes in brain processing as a result of stuttering, too. As you and others have correctly pointed out, there is much to be learned about this complex disorder. Best, Jean