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From: Greg Snyder
Date: 22 Oct 2006
Time: 19:52:02 -0500
Remote Name: 24.74.142.133
Hi Charissa. Botox was briefly used as a stuttering treatment, similar to that of an adductor-type spasmodic dysphonia. Theory being that people who stutter do so secondary to motor-speech incoordination. “Blocking” is caused by hyperactivation of the (adductor) laryngeal muscles. If one could use BOTOX to decrease the activation strength of these muscles of adduction, stuttering would decrease or cease. However, there’s a few significant flaws here. First and foremost, any time you novelize speech, you will enhance fluency. Certainly, a BOTOX injection into laryngeal adductor muscles would alter normal speech production. Secondly, the notion that stuttering is somehow causally related to speech-motor incoordination has been debunked (in my opinion) in 1994. So the theory in which the practice was based became obsolete even before BOTOX was used. I’ve spoken with a few clients that have tried this, and none have reported significant efficacy from it. Further, the side effects (i.e., temporary reduction in vocal quality) was something that they could do without.