The adage about making sure your brain’s engaged before you talk is easier said than done–especially if you’re a stutterer.
Researchers in San Antonio and Santa Barbara, Calif., have found striking differences in the brain scans of stutterers and regular speakers, opening new windows into how the brain works and how to treat people who can be devastated by their trouble talking.
For example, they’ve found that the auditory association area of the brain–the part that lets us monitor what we’re saying and correct ourselves as we go along–seems to be broken in stuttering adults.
Dr. Peter Fox, director of the University of Texas Health Science Center’s Research Imaging Center in San Antonio, has been collaborating with Roger Ingham, a professor of speech and hearing sciences at the University of California at Santa Barbara for 10 years using brain-scan technology.
Part of what they are trying to determine in stutterers is where the problem is originating–in the right brain or the left brain.
Their results show hyperactivity on the right side of the brain in stutterers rather than on the left side, the side most active in normal, or “fluent,” speaking people.
“Showing a lot of excess activity in the right hemisphere of the brain could be the cause of the problem,” Fox said. “When we make them fluent, the right side activity goes down.”
But, Fox and Ingham say, there’s another possibility: Maybe the problem is on the left side of the brain and the right side is compensating for the disorder. That argument–made by other researchers–can’t be ignored, Fox said. “We’re now more agnostic.”
About 4 percent of the population struggles with a stuttering problem at some point in their lives, but three out of four recover on their own, Ingham said. Famous stutterers include Winston Churchill and singers Carly Simon and Mel Tillis.
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“There is considerable evidence this runs in families,” Ingham said, estimating that about half of all stutterers have a family member with the disorder.
At least four to five times as many men as women stutter, and some say the ratio is as high as 10 to 1, Ingham said. Researchers can’t explain why.
Treatment consists of training people to change their speech patterns by extending the syllables of words so they don’t get stuck on short sounds and keep repeating them, Ingham said.
“With careful managing, this can be done very gradually and they can move through increasingly difficult speaking tasks,” Ingham said.
He noted that when a stutterer reads aloud with a non-stutterer or sings, the person no longer stutters.
Bill Sharon, 56, of San Antonio has stuttered all of his life.
He’s worked with the researchers since 1995 because he wants to help–and get help. At one point, he was able to speak without stuttering but regressed because he participated in treatment for only five months instead of the required 20.
In a phone interview, Sharon can say a word or two without stuttering, but an entire sentence becomes an arduous task. Because of stuttering, his life–especially the years he was teased in school–often has been painful.
Going to job interviews was difficult, and then once he had the job, Sharon said he had to work harder and faster to prove himself.
When he saw the program for stutterers advertised at the University of Texas, he signed up.
“I even would be doing this if I was 80,” Sharon said. “I really do want to get over this before I die.”