New Clues into Stuttering May Be Found in Genes

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Re: New Clues inot Stuttering

From: Dennis Drayna
Date: 31 Oct 2005
Time: 18:48:43 -0600
Remote Name: 165.112.46.123

Comments

Dear Tyler, Thanks for your questions. We are all born with a particular set of genes that do not change throughout our life. Some genes express their effect early, such as those that control hair color, some later, such as those that control speech fluency, and some even later still, such as those that control how tall we end up being. Genes reside on chromosomes, which exist in every cell in our body (except our red blood cells). The genes on these chromosomes code for the structures and functions that allow us to do everything that humans can do, from producing heat to throwing a ball, to producing speech. We hypothesize that inherited causes of stuttering are due to alterations in genes that code for nerve cell structures and functions used for speech production, which lie in the brain.


Last changed: 11/15/05