Stuttering is something that can run in families. The movie “The King’s Speech” has made a lot of people aware of what it is like to be a person who stutters. Some people stutter and grow out of it, while others continue to stutter into adulthood. It turns out that there are genetic links behind stuttering.
Stuttering is a speech disorder. A person who stutters may repeat words, or entire phrases while speaking. The person may stretch out sounds for longer than necessary, or may experience “blocking”, which is the term used when a person tries to say something, but cannot get any words to come out. In addition to problems with speech, a person who stutters might also have non-verbal movements that go along with their stuttering. This can include things like head movements, excessive blinking, or even grimacing.
Many children will go through a span of time when they stutter. Children who stutter tend to do this when they are between two and five years old. This is the same time frame that kids start stringing together words into sentences. The severity of the stutter can change depending on how excited, tired, or nervous the child happens to be, and the child might have a stutter that lessens or gains severity throughout the course of the day. Speech therapy is often used as a form of treatment for stuttering.
If you do not stutter, this does not necessarily mean that your child will not stutter. A parent who does stutter, however, has a higher chance of having a child who will stutter, when compared with parents who do not stutter themselves. Stuttering does tend to run in families. About half of all people who stutter have a clear family history of this particular speech disorder.
Research from a study done by the National Institute of Health indicate that stuttering is connected to genes that are involved with cell metabolism. Some mutations linked with it are also associated with mucolipidosis type 2 and 3, which are very rare childhood diseases.
Researchers at the University of Toronto used magnetic resonance imaging to look at the brains of people who stutter. They found that the speech-motor control region of the frontal cortex, and the premotor cortex, and the cerebellum are all parts of the brain that are involved, and that the auditory cortex is not as stimulated as much as would be expected. Stuttering is also related to motor coordination. The same researchers also found the kids who stutter have a more difficult time learning finger tapping sequences than do kids who do not stutter.
In other words, there are physical and genetic differences between people who stutter, and people who do not stutter. Anything that has a genetic component can be passed down from one ancestor to his or her descendants.
Image by stutteringmedia on Flickr