St. John’s, FL, Feb 22 (U.S.): Holly Nopher grew up trying to hide her stutter.
“I was very self-conscious,” said the 40-year-old St. John’s, Florida mom, whose 10-year-old son Colton also has a speech disability. “So I developed habits of switching up my words so they wouldn’t be noticed.”
For centuries, people have feared being judged for stuttering, a condition often misunderstood as a psychological problem caused by things like poor parenting or emotional trauma. But research presented at a scientific conference on Saturday explores the biological underpinnings: genes and brain differences.
“By understanding biology, we will reduce stigma. We will increase acceptance,” one of the speakers, Dr. Gerald Maguire, said in a recent interview with the Associated Press. He’s a California psychiatrist involved in testing potential drugs for stuttering based on science.
Globally, 70 million people stutter, including President Joe Biden, who has spoken out about being ridiculed by classmates and a nun at a Catholic school for his speech disability. He said getting over it was one of the hardest things he’s ever done, The Associated Press reports.
After his campaign event in 2020, his struggle came to light when he met a New Hampshire teenager who was also stuttering. After his father told him about Biden, Bryden Harrington said he wanted to introduce himself and shake hands. We ended up talking for an hour.
Living with stuttering wasn’t easy, Bryden said, recalling a particularly difficult moment years ago when he was caught repeating the Gettysburg Address in class, then went home and cried.
“I want to continue what Joe Biden told me,” he said. “That this doesn’t define who you are and that you can be so much more than what you see for yourself.”
Why do people cover up?
Stuttering has long been documented in ancient China, Greece, and Rome. But no one really had any idea why this was until modern genetics and brain imaging began to provide clues.
Researchers identified the first genes strongly associated with stuttering more than a decade ago. Imaging studies have looked at the brains of adults and older children, and in the past few years, University of Delaware speech disorder researcher Hu Ming Zhao has begun looking at children ages 3 to 5. It is around this age that many children begin to stutter, and they outgrow it by about 80%.
Zhao said the imaging shows slight brain differences in young children who continue to stutter, compared to those who recover and those who do not stutter. He discussed his research Saturday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference.
For example, Zhao and colleagues found that the genetic mutations associated with stuttering are linked to a structural defect in the corpus callosum, the bundle of fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain and ensures that they can communicate; and the thalamus, which is a relay station that sorts sensory information to other parts of the brain. Previous research has also linked stuttering to the basal ganglia, which are brain structures involved in coordinating movement.
“We know that stuttering has a really strong genetic component,” Zhao said. Although many genes may be involved and the exact genetic causes may vary by child, “it is possible that they affect the brain in a similar way.”
Chow’s classmate Evan Osler stutters, likening it to “yips,” or involuntary wrist contractions, while golfing. He said the latest evidence shows it’s a disorder of cognitive control of speech.
However, many people mistakenly believe that people stutter because they are nervous, shy, or experienced childhood adversity – and if they try too hard, they can stop.
“We have a long way to go” to change such beliefs, said University of Maryland researcher Nan Bernstein Ratner. “There are still a lot of legends out there.”
go ahead with acceptance
Speech therapy is the mainstay of stuttering treatment. Maguire, who has stumbled since childhood, said drugs currently being tested could be approved for stuttering in the next few years, first for adults and then for children.
Studies have suggested that stuttering may be related to excess levels of a brain chemical called dopamine, some of which lower dopamine activity or hinder its action in a certain way.
Nofer, an active speech pathologist with the National Stuttering Society, said many people would certainly be interested in trying stuttering medications — even though they weren’t interested in them. She said she was happy with her life as it is and accepted her stuttering. If Colton was struggling and wanted to try medication as a teen, she’d be open to the idea.
It wouldn’t be Bryden, who’s 14 now.
Taking medication, he said, is “just taking a part of you… it takes away a part of your personality.”
Without his stutter, he said, he wouldn’t have set his sights on being a speech-language pathologist when he got older. He wouldn’t have written a children’s book to inspire others. He would not have overcome the challenges that made him brave.