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"Structurno-Funccionalnije e Neyrokhimicheskiye Zaconomernosti Asymmetriye e Plastichnosty Mozga" (Materials of the Brain Institute conference), 2005, p. 190-193.
Speech cerebral lateralization in stuttering etiology and pathogenesis.
Nabieva T.N., Ishchenko A.A.
Brain Institute of Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, 105064, per. Obukha 5, Moscow, Russia; I M Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy.
From 1931 many specialists keep the Travis theory and consider that stuttering is based on partial or abnormal cerebral dominance and bilateral representation of speech centers. Besides, alteration of hand dominance is still considered one of the reasons for stuttering origin. In accordance with this data, among the stutterers there must be represented a great amount of left-handers, altered right-handers and persons with different hand, leg and eye dominance. To verify this supposition we examined 50 stuttering children (age 6-15). Dominant hand, leg and eye of each patient were established by means of special tests. It was revealed that all participants were right-handed persons, only 3 of which had dominant left leg and left eye. Four children had left leading eyes together with the right hand and right leg dominance. In 8 children there was no apparent hand preference in early childhood, however upon reaching the age 5, all of them became right-handed. Forty six children began to stutter after the hand dominance was established. There were no cases of forcible alteration of leading hand in our participants. Numerous investigations revealed that in speech processing participate not only the fields of Broca's and Wernicke's, primary occipital, temporal, frontal, visual areas of the left cerebral hemispheres, but also the same corresponding areas of right hemisphere. Thus, the involvement of the right hemisphere structures in speech producing is common, but not the pathology, specific for stuttering. The comparison of literature data with our investigation brings us to the conclusion that the alteration of hand dominance, partial speech dominance, or peculiarities in linguistic function interhemispheric distribution are not involved in stuttering etiology.
Key words: stuttering, birth trauma, cerebral dominance.
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