Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Brain Imaging and Stuttering

›
An interesting article appeared in the Wall Street Journal (January 24, 2012) entitled “Probing the Brain’s Mysteries.” Much like mapping...
5 comments:
Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Reasons to Participate in the Curetogether Survey

›
If your concern is solely about yourself and what drug or treatment you could partake in that would enhance your fluency, then perhaps you w...
1 comment:
Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Curetogether Adds Stuttering

›
I suggested that the Curetogether organization might add stuttering to its list of health conditions.  The response from Daniel Reda, one of...
Monday, December 12, 2011

Citizen Involvement in Stuttering Research?

›
With the dashing of hopes that pagoclone might eventually be released to the market, the slow pace of medical research for palliatives/cures...
2 comments:
Friday, December 2, 2011

Breaking News About Pagoclone

›
I have received the following comment from Dr. Gerald Maguire, UC Irvine School of Medicine, who has been involved in the pagoclone trials: ...
5 comments:
Wednesday, November 23, 2011

False Negative Impacts on Drug Trial Outcomes

›
In the pharmacological research literature, much has been made about the placebo effect and its impact on drug effectiveness measures.  Indi...
Sunday, November 13, 2011

Stuttering and Gene Therapies

›
Stem cell therapies are generally oriented toward the remediation of some chemical deficiency in a living organism.  For example, Parkinson’...
1 comment:
Saturday, October 29, 2011

Downregulation and Stuttering Treatments

›
A neural circuit may become desensitized to a drug through a process called downregulation.  For example, benzodiazepines (BZs) bind to BZ r...
Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Is Stuttering Disruptive?

›
An interesting article appeared in the NY Times regarding a student who stuttered and was shunned by his teacher during classroom discussion...
1 comment:
Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Time Elasticity, Stuttering, and Pagoclone Trials

›
Researchers at UCLA conducted an experiment regarding the estimation of time intervals.  Subjects, some of whom were on stimulants, were ask...
Thursday, September 8, 2011

Limbic Stuttering

›
We have previously discussed the possibility that stuttering may have two components: one generated by brain disfunctions and the other gene...
1 comment:
Wednesday, August 31, 2011

The Cerebral Cortex and Stuttering, Part 2

›
Per Alm has recently published a chapter in a book focusing on cluttering . As he points out, since stuttering and cluttering are overlappin...
Monday, August 15, 2011

The Cerebral Cortex and Stuttering, Part 1

›
We have thus far focused heavily on the basal ganglia as a potential root cause of stuttering. In the next two posts, we discuss the possibl...
2 comments:
Thursday, August 4, 2011

Subgroups and Drug Testing Trials

›
The existence of subgroups among stutterers may lead to the appearance of reduced efficacies for any therapeutic treatment under test.  ...
Friday, July 22, 2011

The Direct Pathway and Winner Take All

›
The direct pathway conveys motor signals governing speech from regions within the cerebral cortex through the basal ganglia. The basal gangl...
Saturday, July 9, 2011

Subgroups of Stutterers

›
Some stutterers are responsive to dopamine D2 receptor antagonists such as atypical antipsychotic drugs. Others may be responsive to psycho-...
3 comments:
Friday, July 1, 2011

Per Alm's Comments on Blog

›
Per Alm sent this stimulating commentary regarding this blog: Thanks for a very good and well written blog. It seems like you are doing a ...
3 comments:
Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Early Childhood Stuttering

›
In the previous post, we showed that stuttering may occur if there is an imbalance between the number of D2 dopamine receptors on the in...
Sunday, June 19, 2011

Direct/Indirect Pathways and Fluency

›
In this post, we delve more deeply into the cortical-basal-ganglia-thalamus path (the circuit labeled by “1”) shown in the Figure in the pre...
3 comments:
Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Defending Covert Stuttering, Part 2

›
If you are having a bad day with respect to fluency, consider talking less. Doing so may involve avoiding speaking situations within reason...
3 comments:
Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Defending Covert Stuttering, Part 1

›
It appears that one of the dogmas of most speech therapy approaches is to extinguish covert stuttering. Covert stuttering may involve behav...
3 comments:
Thursday, May 5, 2011

Antipsychotic Drugs and Weight Gain

›
For those individuals taking atypical antipsychotics (such as zyprexa, abilify, etc.) to improve fluency, weight gain as well as type-2 diab...
Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Stuttering Drug Research and the Social Media

›
Social networking as a means for conducting drug testing was reported in the April 23, 2011 issue of the Wall Street Journal. A clinical t...
Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Stuttering and the Brain Atlas

›
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, April 12, 2011) discussed the development of a comprehensive brain map, funded by Pa...
Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Stuttering and the Dual Premotor System

›
Although we discussed the medial and lateral premotor systems separately, they are part of an integrated motor function system known as the ...
Friday, April 1, 2011

Stuttering and the Lateral Premotor System

›
Individuals who stutter might be perplexed by their sudden fluency in certain contexts. For example, when speaking in unison as part of a ch...
Friday, March 25, 2011

ITunes Podcasts on Stuttering

›
I found a number of podcasts all available free on ITunes. I gather that most of these can be found also on the web. They include: Stutt...
1 comment:
Thursday, March 17, 2011

Is Gene Therapy for Stuttering Near?

›
A fascinating article appearing in the Wall Street Journal ("Gene Therapy Raises Hopes for Parkinson's Treatment," March 17, p...

Stuttering and the Medial Premotor System

›
In previous posts we have discussed the possible role of dopamine imbalances in the basal ganglia as a cause of stuttering. We now elaborate...