In "Sovremenniye Napravleniya v Issledovanii Functionalnoy Mezhpolusharnoy Asymmetrii e Plastichnosty Mozga" (Materials of the conference), 2010, pp 205-208, Moscow, Russia.

Cerebral organization of adaptive linguistic behavior in developmental stuttering.

Nabieva T.N.

Brain Research Department, Scientific Center of Neurology, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences

        In recent years, PET and functional MRI investigations revealed that formulation and expression of language in stuttering subjects activate classic speech-related brain areas as well as additional frontal, parietal and subcortical regions of right hemisphere. It is remaining uncertain: does specific pattern of brain activation during stuttering represents compensation for dysfunctional left hemispheric mechanisms or it is a consequence of adaptive linguistic behavior for the purpose of camouflage stuttering. Many adults with developmental stuttering reported that they permanently monitor their speech, anticipate possible dysfluencies and change forthcoming utterances, avoiding words with "risky" sounds. It is possible that involving of regions of right hemisphere serves the possibility of such anticipatory monitoring. In this case stutterers might perform words avoidance tasks better than fluent speakers. To verify the supposition, we implemented the investigation, where 10 adult stuttering subjects and 10 control subjects: (1) read and retold the text; (2) read new text and retold it, avoiding words, beginning from "n".
        Speech of stuttering subjects at 2-nd part of experiment (words avoiding task) did not change significantly as compared with 1-st part - story retelling.
        Speech of control subjects considerably worsened when they tried to retell text avoiding words beginning from "n" as compared with normal retelling. They coped with word avoiding task much worse than stuttering participants. During 3 minutes in 2 part of experiment fluent speakers pronounced considerable less words in retelling (p>0.05), missed more words beginning from "n" (3:1), performed more pauses (3:1), and mistakes (5:1) in comparison with stuttering subjects. It is quite possible that additional neural network in right hemisphere of stuttering speakers evolves from childhood and serves their adaptive linguistic behavior.

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