Wednesday, November 02, 2016

Nan's Fluency Bank


Check out the Fluency Bank!
FluencyBank is a shared database for the study of the development of fluency in both normal and disordered populations. Support comes from NIH Grant 1R01DC015494; P.I.s are Nan Bernstein-Ratner (University of Maryland) and Brian MacWhinney (Carnegie Mellon University) . Participants include normally-developing monolingual and bilingual children, children with disfluencies (CWD), adults with disfluencies (AWSD, and second language learners. Researchers and clinicians studying fluency who are interested in joining the consortium should read the Ground Rules and then request a username and password by sending email to nratner@umd.edu with contact information and affiliation.

Monday, September 12, 2016

Stuttering in advertising



Joe Gill writes to me:
Growing up with a stammer and studying to go into the Graphic Design industry I found that nearly all advertising aimed towards stammering was either very condescending or just outright bad design. I tried to tackle this with a design of a poster advertising campaign for 'The Starfish Project'.
What's your opinion? I really like the texts as they get to the heart of what it is like to be a person who stutters.

Here is an article on his work.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

The new treatment approach: Stutter Pride

Here is what I recently read in a document need for damage control resulting from strong debates between various teams (fluency shapists, stuttering modifiers, and "stutter pride" proponents).

Until recently, we had two approaches: fluency shaping (learn how to speak in a new and more fluent way) and stuttering modification (learn how to modify your stuttering for the better).

Now, we have in analogy to Gay Pride, Stutter Pride. You say: it's OK that I stutter, actually it is not only OK, it's great because it makes me special and we should tell the world that we are proud to be stutterers. The approach is clear: define-away the problem. Just declare that there is no problem, or at the very least that this difference to the norm is no issue at all and it's society and the affected person brainwashed by society to set those norms. And in a second step, unleash political correctness on your enemies, because everyone who declares that fluent speech is the norm and that they do not like to listen to people who stutter, are stutter-phobes (in analogy to homophobes) is an enemy

Monday, August 22, 2016

Watch Area 44 and not Area 51!


Looks like a very interesting piece of brain imaging work by the Martin Sommer team with the main author Nicole Neef here:
Area 44 is a cytoarchitectonically distinct portion of Broca's region. Parallel and overlapping large-scale networks couple with this region thereby orchestrating heterogeneous language, cognitive and motor functions. In the context of stuttering, area 44 frequently comes into focus because structural and physiological irregularities affect developmental trajectories, stuttering severity, persistency, and etiology. A remarkable phenomenon accompanying stuttering is the preserved ability to sing. Speaking and singing are connatural behaviours recruiting largely overlapping brain networks including left and right area 44. Analysing which potential subregions of area 44 are malfunctioning in adults who stutter, and what effectively suppresses stuttering during singing, may provide a better understanding of the coordination and reorganization of large-scale brain networks dedicated to speaking and singing in general. We used fMRI to investigate functionally distinct subregions of area 44 during imagery of speaking and imaginary of humming a melody in 15 dextral males who stutter and 17 matched control participants. Our results are fourfold. First, stuttering was specifically linked to a reduced activation of left posterior-dorsal area 44, a subregion that is involved in speech production, including phonological word processing, pitch processing, working memory processes, sequencing, motor planning, pseudoword learning, and action inhibition. Second, left posterior-area-44-to-parietal functional coupling was deficient in stuttering. Third, despite the preserved ability to sing, males who stutter showed bilaterally a reduced activation of area 44 when imagine humming a melody, suggesting that this fluency-enhancing condition seems to bypass posterior-dorsal area 44 to achieve fluency. Fourth, time courses of the posterior subregions in area 44 showed delayed peak activations in the right hemisphere in both groups, possibly signaling the offset response. Because these offset response-related activations in the right hemisphere were comparably large in males who stutter, our data suggest a hyperactive mechanism to stop speech motor responses and thus possibly reflect a pathomechanism, which, until now, has been neglected. Overall, the current results confirmed a recently described co-activation based parcellation supporting the idea of functionally distinct subregions of left area 44.
Area 44 seems to be a kind of orchestra conductor, which goes somewhat into recent suggestions (and my belief) that stuttering is a system failure, i.e. that it's not necessarily a single function (in one area) breaking down but the system of different interacting areas as a whole but in this case it's one area that is needed to orchestrate the system. But I have to say that I do not know enough about this topic to make more informed comments.

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

RESTART DCM workshop in Rotterdam in July 14-16th



Marie-Christen Franken has written to me regarding a workshop she is organizing in Rotterdam:
This July we will have an International RESTART DCM workshop in Rotterdam, so far 14 clinicians from all over the world have subscribed for that. We could book about 6 or so more. Maybe you would like to bring this to the attention of colleagues who might be interested?
You can view the invitation here.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Walking, talking, and sharing in the French Pyrenees with Paul


If you enjoy walking in wild natural environments, eating good food, and sharing your experiences with other like-minded people, this is for you!

In 2016 Paul Brocklehurst and Blanca Rubí are hosting a week-long retreat in the Pyrenean mountains, close to the French-Spanish border. Our aim is to provide opportunities for small groups of up to 10 people, all of whom have a connection with stuttering, to walk, talk, and share experiences in the midst of one of the most spectacular and beautiful natural environments that Europe has to offer.

There are still spaces free on the walk and talk. Both PWS and their partners welcome.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

No, a quick cure for all is far away.

The author of this article is completely misinterpreting the likelihood of a cure: read here.

But of course that will prevent virtually no mainstream journalist and desperate pws to jump on the bandwagon.

Let me clarify the stuttering mouse hype:

1) this mutation as far as I understand occurs in 5% of all people who stutter. So even if those people could be cured, the remaining 95% would not.

2) even if the mutation is proven to cause it and we would know the causal link between mutation and neurobiology vulnerable to jams in the brain, there is no guarantee that the damage done by the mutation change be counteracted.

3) even if an antidote to the mutation can be found, e.g. by providing the body with the missing proteins that the mutation did not produce, the protein might have been critical for proper development of neurobiology and thus will only help children who are developing their neurobiology but not adult brains. A bit like it is too late to use better cement once the house is built!

4) even if an antidote exists, it is not clear whether it has side effects.

Nevertheless,

1) a hype for a cure, even if completely misguided, could lead to political pressure to put much more money into stuttering. Why are you financing stuttering research, you terrible politicians??? Do you want to be responsible that little stuttering kids are cured?

2) it is the first example of proving that genes are correlated with stuttering behaviour and untangling the causal link will definitely help us understand at least 5% of stuttering.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

"Stuttering" mice make us fluent?



They managed to create a stuttering mouse, or let be more precise they created a mouse that has the same gene mutation than a subclass of people who stutter and that shows an abnormal "speech" pattern.

This is significant as we are moving out of the soft psychosocial research arena with weak research standards to a more rigorous research arena with full-time scientists who have been trained to this kind of stuff for many different disorders.

I predicted this development at the discovery of the gene mutation.

Read the article in Cell here.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

BREAKING NEWS: The era of sub-typing has started!!!

OK, I am a bit late at responding but there are exciting new developments in the genetics and brain imaging of stuttering. And you should listen to StutterTalk's Peter Reitzes interview with Denis Drayna, but listen carefully and rewind a few times as he throws around all kind of protein names.

The essence is: We have found another protein complex (affected by other gene mutations) that disturbs the normal functioning of a nerve cell in very similar aspects as the previously found protein complex. Imagine you find that the postman has a limp and then you find that the postman's car is slow so you can argue that it is about the slowness of the mail delivery that is at the core of the problems. And that is also what Dennis suggested: at least some stuttering might be part of issues with "moving things around in the nerve cells (which can be quite long)" which are suspected causing all kinds of neurological disorders.


And I am happy to hear that they do what I asked them to do: Only brainscan people with the same mututation! This is the way forward in my view.

Of course we need to be careful:
  • not all stuttering is driving by this.
  • neurodevelopmental issues could affect similar areas but are driven not by gene mutation 
  • Dennis knows much more about but again we have to wait years until he publishes it. ;-)

Will I meet you in Antwerp on February 27th?


Wednesday, February 03, 2016

What Causes Stuttering with Dr. Soo-Eun Chang



Check out Peter's interview with Soo-Eun Chang, who is a neuroscientist from the Speech Neurophysiology Lab at the University of Michigan and specializes in brain imaging young children: here.

If I get time, I will listen to the interview in full and make comments. After only 5 minutes of listening, I already have a different take on some statements! ;-)