A lower blood supply in the brain could explain the origin of stuttering
Their symptom they know each other perfectly and there are also therapies to try to counteract their effects. However little is known about the origin of the stammering, a speech disorder: genetic causes, altered circuits in the brain or a minor blood supply in this area of the body could be the causes of this problem in children.
This last cause has been the center of a new investigation carried out by the Los Angeles Children's Hospital that has found important clues about how the blood supply and the blood stammering In children.
Stuttering and blood flow
The researchers started from a Pattern that they had detected in other studies. When a person had some type of problem in his brain related blood flow, this patient also had speech-related disorders similar to stuttering. For this reason, they wanted to check if in the same way in patients with this communication problem they also had a scarcer blood supply to their head.
To verify this theory, researchers used two groups to measure the blood supply in their brains. On the one hand 26 people with stuttering and on the other, 36 patients without any type of speech disorder. All of them had an MRI scan to check the blood flow that reached their heads and if there was any kind of difference.
The researchers found evidence that those who stuttered had a reduction in blood flow in the Broca area of the brain, which is located in the frontal lobe, responsible for speech. This allowed the authors of the study to link a more severe disorder with abnormal levels in the region of the brain responsible for processing the words.
Severe stuttering, less watering
As the doctor indicates Jay Desai, responsible for this study, in those cases in which the stuttering was more severe, the blood supply to the brain was more anomalous. This specialist indicates that although this relationship has been found, it can not be considered as a cause of this speech disorder.
Although the people in charge of the study do believe that stuttering can be explained from a cerebral perspective, where something must work badly for this speech disorder to appear. This is related to the research carried out by the Institute of the Mind in Development, belonging to the Pediatric Hospital of Los Angeles, who found in another of his works what could be the origin of this problem.
An explanation that was also found after analyzing the brain of several children with stuttering. After analyzing the metabolism of neurons in several patients, the researchers noted that some areas of the brain were altered in people with this type of speech disorder.
That is, the regions affected and linked to this disorder included a network of speech production that has to do with the regulation of attention; and the emotional and memory network, which is involved with the regulation of emotion. Greater modification in this system, supposes more level of this variation in the communication.
Damián Montero
