PHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF STUTTERING

口吃是一种言语障碍，据估计，口吃的患病率占世界人口的1%。对个人来说，这往往是一个重大的沟通问题，限制了教育和就业机会以及社会和心理调整。口吃的病因尚不清楚，治疗策略和结果也存在很大差异。理解口吃的病因和开发成功的治疗技术的一个主要障碍是缺乏对这种疾病的生理学基础的了解。口吃表现为言语运动过程的崩溃。已知的影响口吃发生的复杂因素，包括心理社会、认知和语言变量，最终必然对言语产生所必需的生理事件产生影响。因此，要理解口吃，就必须了解口吃时言语运动过程中断的生理机制。本申请中提出的实验通过采取一种新的方法来解决语言处理在口吃中的作用，该方法侧重于感知和产生语言刺激的神经生理学。大脑对语言刺激的平均电反应将被用来探索口吃儿童和成年人的语言处理能力。这些实验将确定口吃者是否有非典型的语言神经系统，即使他们只听单词，而不是产生单词。在另一组实验中，相同的参与者将产生旨在挑战语言规划和语音产生过程的话语。这些实验的结果将为理解影响儿童和成人口吃的多种因素提供重大进展。

Stuttering is a disorder of speech with a prevalence estimated to be 1% of the world's population. It is often a significant communicative problem for the individual, limiting educational and employment opportunities and social and psychological adjustment. The etiology of stuttering is unknown, and treatment strategies and outcomes are highly variable. A major impediment to understanding the etiology of stuttering and to the development of successful therapeutic techniques is the lack of understanding of the physiological bases of the disorder. Stuttering manifests itself as a breakdown in speech motor processes. The complex factors known to affect the occurrence of stuttering, including psychosocial, cognitive, and linguistic variables, must ultimately have an effect on the physiological events necessary for the production of speech. Therefore, to understand stuttering it is essential to understand the physiological mechanisms underlying disruptions of speech motor processes in stuttering. The experiments proposed in this application addresses the role of linguistic processing in stuttering by taking a new approach, one that focuses on the neurophysiology of the perception and the production of linguistic stimuli. Averaged electrical responses of the brain to linguistic stimuli will be used to explore the linguistic processing abilities of children and adults who stutter. These experiments will determine if people who stutter have atypical neural subsystems for language even when they are only listening to words and not producing them. In another set of experiments the same participants will produce utterances that are designed to challenge linguistic planning and production processes for speech. The results of these experiments will provide major progress toward understanding the multiple factors that influence stuttering in children and adults.