Interruptions anywhere along this articulation pathway can impair the utterance, and create something like a stutter.
Now, studying a neurocomputational model of this complex process, researchers have found that stuttering stems from a glitch in the neural circuit that initiates speech. They presented their findings at the Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. [F. Guenther et al., Stuttering Starts at Speech Initiation, Not Due to Impaired Motor Skills]
Frank Guenther:
My main research interest is translating how the brain translates thought into movements of the tongue and the other speech articulators that convey these thoughts to another person.
Stuttering is very common and it happens in all languages. It’s estimated that about one percent of the world’s population stutters.
Despite this, and despite being studied at least as far back as the ancient Romans, our understanding of what causes stuttering has been until recent years very poor.
Having a computer model allows Guenther to test out different hypotheses for why the initiation circuit fails… whether, for example, it’s an overabundance of activation or a degradation of neuronal signaling. Guenther says he’d like to combine his model with imaging studies that show the basal ganglia in action… to see whether his predicted mechanisms play a role in people who stutter.
