How the brain repairs stuttering
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with left inferior frontal structural anomalies. While children often recover, stuttering may also spontaneously disappear much later after years of dysfluency. These rare cases of unassisted recovery in adulthood provide a model of optimal brain repair outside the classical windows of developmental plasticity. Here we explore what distinguishes this type of recovery from less optimal repair modes, i.e. therapy-induced assisted recovery and attempted compensation in subjects who are still affected. We show that persistent stuttering is associated with mobilization of brain regions contralateral to the structural anomalies for compensation attempt. In contrast, the only neural landmark of optimal repair is activation of the left BA 47/12 in the orbitofrontal cortex, adjacent to a region where a white matter anomaly is observed in persistent stutterers, but normalized in recovered subjects. These findings show that late repair of neurodevelopmental stuttering follows the principles of contralateral and perianomalous reorganization.
Details
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 2747-2760 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Brain |
Volume | 132 |
Issue number | 10 |
Publication status | Published - Oct 2009 |
Peer-reviewed | Yes |
Externally published | Yes |
External IDs
PubMed | 19710179 |
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ORCID | /0000-0001-7989-5860/work/142244426 |
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- Functional MRI, Orbitofrontal, Plasticity, Recovery, Speech production