Skip Navigation


Brain Advance Access originally published online on August 26, 2009
Brain 2009 132(10):2747-2760; doi:10.1093/brain/awp185
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Supplementary Data
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
132/10/2747    most recent
awp185v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Kell, C. A.
Right arrow Articles by Giraud, A.-L.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Kell, C. A.
Right arrow Articles by Giraud, A.-L.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

How the brain repairs stuttering

Christian A. Kell1,2, Katrin Neumann3, Katharina von Kriegstein4, Claudia Posenenske3, Alexander W. von Gudenberg5, Harald Euler6 and Anne-Lise Giraud2,7

1 Brain Imaging Center, Department of Neurology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany 2 Département d’Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France 3 Department of Phoniatrics and Pedaudiology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany 4 Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, University College London, UK 5 Institut der Kasseler Stottertherapie, Bad Emstal, Germany 6 Institute of Psychology, University of Kassel, Germany 7 INSERM U960, Paris, France

Correspondence to: Dr Christian A. Kell, Brain Imaging Center, Department of Neurology, Theodor Stern Kai 7, 60590 Frankfurt, Germany E-mail: c.kell{at}em.uni-frankfurt.de

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.

Key Words: plasticity; recovery; functional MRI; speech production; orbitofrontal

Abbreviations: FA, fractional anisotropy; PWS, people who stutter; PS, persistent stutterers; RS, recovered stutterers

Received November 5, 2008. Revised May 20, 2009. Accepted June 10, 2009.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.