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From: Greg Snyder
Date: 17 Oct 2006
Time: 10:59:33 -0500
Remote Name: 130.74.194.57
Hi Marcel. I wanted to take a minute to reply to your post. First off, stuttered speech is not an uncommon byproduct relative to the treatment of Parkinson’s. The uses of Levodopa (L-DOPA), or other drugs, have been documented to bring about stuttered speech. To be honest, you are the first case in which I have heard that stuttered speech is brought about secondary to DBS. However, this makes intuitive sense if one follows a neurological stuttering model. In short, speech-related neurolingustic processing (within the Basal Ganglia) has been affected and stuttered speech surfaces as a consequence (or even compensatory strategy) to these processing errors. These errors in speech-related neurolingustic processing can be brought about by tinkering with how the basal ganglia functions via: dopaminergic activity associated with Parkinson’s management, as well as methodologies such as DBS that use electrical stimulation to inhibit affected cellular activity. (Point being, the onset of stuttering in cases such as yours seems to be associated with us tinkering around with how the basal ganglia functions.) Subsequently, I would suspect that (in time) the cessation of DBS would result in a decrease (or perhaps cessation) of your stuttered speech. This, however, may be antithetical to why DBS was implanted in the first place! Subsequently, I suspect that the use of speech feedback would likely be one of the better choices in decreasing stuttering frequency, and improve overall “fluency.” If you are interested in this type of treatment, I would contact Paul Blanchet from the State University of New York at Fredonia; he researches stuttering, as well as the use of speech feedback in those with Parkinson’s. Relative to your sore throat and rough voice, we would need more information before tacking that question with any kind of validity!