Alleviation of developmental stuttering following deep brain stimulation of the ventral intermediate nucleus of the thalamus

摘要

To the Editor: Stuttering is a disorder of speech fluency characterized by prolongations, repetitions, and blocks. Developmental stuttering has an early onset, and acquired stuttering typically occurs later in life and is often secondary to neurological injury. While the full etiological nature of stuttering is still unclear, a growing body of evidence suggests that the basal ganglia provide internal timing cues to signal the next motor pattern in a sequence and are thus implicated in the dysfunction in stuttering. Further evidence stems from the clinical observation that extrapyramidal movement disorders, such as Parkinson's disease, can exacerbate developmental stuttering or cause acquired stuttering (1). Previous reports describe the use of deep brain stimulation (DBS) to improve acquired stuttering (2). To our knowledge, this is the first report of alleviation of developmental stuttering using DBS.