Alleviation of acquired stuttering with human centremedian thalamic stimulation

Abstract

Despite many investigations, the cerebral mechanism for stuttering remains unknown. Recently, increased attention has been paid to acquired stuttering of adult onset in the hope that the events associated with it might provide clues to the biological mechanism underlying stuttering. This attention has focused exclusively on the cortical substrates. We present our observations of acquired dysfluency, presumably of subcortical origin in a neurosurgical subject with intractable pain. The stuttering was relieved by thalamic electric stimulation. The effect of thalamic stimulation on the stuttering suggests that the pathophysiology of transient asynchronisation in the balancing and sequencing of multiple impulses is amenable to a diffusely orchestrated functional tuning of the thalamic and brainstem implicated subcortical structures and pathways.