Dr. Erich Jarvis

Now to finish it off, that signal is sent to your auditory pathway so you can hear what you're speaking in your own head.

And this is why it's complicated.

Oh, and then you got to write, right?

Okay, here comes the fourth one.

Now the hand areas next to your speech pathway has got to take that auditory signal or even the adjacent motor signals for speaking and translate it into a visual signal on paper.

So you're using at least four brain circuits, which includes the speech production and the speech perception pathways to write.

Yeah, so we actually accidentally came across stuttering in songbirds, and we've published several papers on this to try to figure out the neurobiological basis.

The first study we had was a brain area called the basal ganglia, the striatum part of the basal ganglia involved in coordinating movements, learning how to make movements.

When it was damaged in the speech-like pathway in these birds,

What we found is that they started to stutter as the brain region recovered.

And unlike humans, they actually recovered after three or four months.

And why is that the case?

Because bird brains undergoes new neurogenesis in a way that human or mammal brains don't.

And it was the new neurons that were coming in into the circuit, but not quite, you know, with the right proper activity was resulting in this stuttering in these birds.

And after it was repaired, not exactly the old song came back after the repair, but still it recovered a lot better.

And it's now known, they call this neurogenic stuttering in humans, damage to the basal ganglia or some type of disruption to the basal ganglia at a young age also causes stuttering in humans.

And even those who are born with stuttering, it's often the basal ganglia that's disrupted than some other brain circuit.

And we think the speech part of the basal ganglia.

There are ways to overcome the stuttering through behavioral therapy.

And I think all of the tools out there have something to do with sensory motor integration.