Content area
Full Text
TORONTO -- New research suggests that stuttering, long thought to be a psychological problem, is in fact a biological condition.
A study conducted by University of Toronto researchers found stutterers tend to rely on the right hemisphere of their brain to speak, as opposed to the left side, which is used by the majority of people.
Our research drives home the point that stuttering has a very strong neurological component that demands a lot of attention and that it is not a psychological problem," said lead investigator Dr. Luc De Nil.
Using positron emission tomography (PET) technology, the research team compared the brains of 20 stutterers to those of 12 normal-speaking individuals and found increased right hemisphere activation among stutterers.
Although increased activation in the right hemisphere of stutterers brains has been observed before, Dr. De Nil said PET technology has allowed his research team to be much more specific in locating the regions of the brain involved in such activation.
We have been able to show it is not only the motor regions of the cortex, but other regions that are involved in cognitive processing of speech and language formulation," he said.
The study also showed--for the first time--that patients who become more fluent immediately following an...