[ Contents | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Judy Kuster
Date: 10/18/01
Time: 1:49:30 PM
Remote Name: 134.29.30.79
Dennis Drayna from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders answered a question about genetics and stuttering under "the prof is in" on this conference. He stated, in part, "There is a great deal of evidence supporting the view that at least some stuttering is hereditary. This evidence consists of studies of twins, studies of adopted children, and studies of families in which a large number of family members are affected with stuttering. In addition, several new studies have gone a step further, and have produced evidence for the location of specific genes that appear to be at work in some of these instances. We have recently completed such a study here at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and have strong evidence for the location of one such gene." You might also be interested in reviewing some of the studies about "The Influence of Heredity" (p. 120ff) in Bloodstein's A Handbook on Stuttering.