Brain Development Different in Kids Who Stutter: Study

A new study claims that brain development in children who stutter is different  when compared to other kids.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Alberta, suggests that children who stutter have less grey matter in the important regions of brain, which is associated with speech. This study helps in understanding brain structures that control speech production and the factors that cause stuttering.

Previous research on the subject was usually based on MRI scans of adult brains. But, in these studies, scans taken were after the onset of stuttering and mostly between the ages of 2-5 years.

"You can never be quite sure whether the differences in brain structure or function you're looking at were the result of a lifetime of coping with a speech disorder or whether those brain differences were there from the beginning," Beal, a speech-language pathologist said in a statement.

In this current study, the researchers looked at brain scans of 28 children belonging to the age group 5-12 years. Half of the kids were diagnosed with stuttering and the other half was the control group. On examining the data the researchers discovered that the inferior frontal gyrus region of the brain develops abnormally in those kids who stutter.

This finding is important as this region of the brain controls articulatory coding- getting information the brain understand about language and coding it into speech movements.

"If you think about the characteristics of stuttering -- repetitions of the first sounds or syllables in a word, prolongation of sounds in a word -- it's easy to hypothesize that it's a speech-motor-control problem," explained Beal.

The study is the step towards understanding how much of the grey matter volumes are influenced by stuttering treatment and also in studying the motor sequence learning difference between kids who stutter and those who do not, according to Beal.

The study was published in the journal Cortex.