The two most prominent neurological abnormalities associated with stuttering:

  • Overactive speech motor control, resulting in too much speech muscle movement, such as hard blocks, prolongations, and repetitions. DAF helps stutterers to slow down speech muscle movements. Fluency shaping therapy trains stutterers to speak with relaxed speech muscle movements.
  • Underactive auditory processing, resulting in poor integration between how we hear our voices and how we feel our muscles moving. DAF, FAF, and MAF appear to increase auditory processing activity.

Stuttering is also a dopaminergic disorder, along with Tourette’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Dopaminergic disorders manifest in relation to stress. Stereotypical behaviors increase if the person tries not to do the behavior.

For more information see our free e-book Neurology of Stuttering.