The Brains of Adult Stutterers: Are They Different from Nonstutterers?

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Re: Stuttering and Apraxia

From: Janis Ingham
Date: 10/6/02
Time: 2:37:36 PM
Remote Name: 68.6.68.82

Comments

Maggie - These are very thoughtful and logical questions. It's such a pleasure to see a young, inquisitive mind at work! As you pursue your graduate studies, I hope you'll keep in mind that a research career in our discipline is very exciting and rewarded, and we're in need of people like you.

But, to respond to your questions: First, comparing brain activity of apraxic persons and stutterers would, indeed, be very interesting. There are so many good questions awaiting study. We have not done a study like this - mostly because there are so many other questions that we've got lined up for study at the moment. But one piece of information that you'll find interesting is that the insula, an area of the brain that is aberrently activated during stuttering has also been found (on autopsy) to have a deviant anatomical structure in people who were apraxic. Hmmm.

About the reading task, you are correct in assuming that our subjects were using connected speech. They read aloud paragraphs from a text throughout each 40-second scan.

About deactivation in the auditory area: it is indeed, interesting. We were surprised by this finding, but we have replicated it four times now, in men and women during reading and spontaneous speech. So, we believe it's a real effect. Our interpretation is that stutterers may not be actively monitoring their speech when they are stuttering. Your point is correct that people who stutter are aware of their stuttering, but our own research and that of several others also indicates that stutterers are not very accurate at identifying individual moments of stuttering, especially while they are speaking. In fact, some research has shown that teaching stutterers accurately to monitor (count/identify) each moment of stuttering while they are speaking serves to reduce the frequency of stuttering. Perhaps "turning on" a suppressed auditory system has value in treatment.

Thanks again for your questions. Hope these replies have been helpful.


Last changed: September 14, 2005