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"Actualniye Voprosy Funccionalnoy Mezhpolusharnoy Asymmetriyi." (Materials of the Brain Institute conference), 2003, pp183-185.
Partial cerebral dominance in stuttering etiology and pathogenesis.
Nabiyeva T.N., Mukhin E.I., Ishchenko A.A.
Brain Institute of Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, 105064, per. Obukha 5, Moscow, Russia; IM Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy.
Traditionally speech therapists considered one of the stuttering reasons to be the alteration of hand dominance from left hand to right in early childhood. As was considered, it leads to bilateral representation of speech centers and to partial speech dominance. In accordance with this theory, among stutterers there must be represented a great amount of left-handers, altered right-handers and persons with different hand, leg and eye dominance. To confirm this supposition, we examined 50 stuttering children. 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. After the examining of case histories and medical documents, as well as conversations with patients' relatives, we discovered that mothers of 21 patients had complicated pregnancies; 39 mothers had complicated confinement. As a result, 39 children were born with trauma (asphyxia neonatorum), increased cranial pressure within first life months was registered in 33 participants, and 40 had muscle tone disturbances. Obviously, the posttraumatic interhemispheric redistribution of functions occurs as a consequence of prenatal and inborn brain pathology instead of handedness alteration. Neurological brain damages predetermine the tendency of bilateral representation of the speech centers. Most likely, partial speech dominance is specific not for stutterers, but for children enduring birth trauma. In accordance with our investigations, stutterers as a group are more similar to children who endured birth trauma than the children with altered hand dominance.
Key words: stuttering, birth trauma, cerebral dominance.
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