ABSTRACT
Stuttering has eluded understanding since antiquity (Travis, 1978). Recently, two new advances are promising: Several investigative teams have embarked on linkage analysis to determine if a specific region of the genome is associated with chronic developmental stuttering; and functional brain imaging is being used to describe brain activation abnormalities during disfluent speech (Barinaga, 1995; Fox et al., 1996; Wu, et al., 1995). Despite procedural differences among investigators using functional brain imaging, the results thus far confirm previous research (Moore & Haynes, 1980; Wells & Moore, 1990; Wood, Stump, McKennhan, Sheldon, & Proctor, 1980), which suggested a reduction in left hemisphere dominance during stuttering (Braun et al., 1997; Fox et al., 1995; Wu et al., 1995). These studies are difficult to interpret, however. On the one hand, they may represent brain organization changes as a result of persons struggling with a lifelong chronic speech impairment. On the other hand, they may suggest that persons who develop chronic adult stuttering are those who initially had a different brain organization for speech.
