By looking at how the brain responds to different aspects of grammar, specifically nouns and verbs, researchers at the UT Dallas Callier Center for Communication Disorders are hoping to provide a better understanding of the nature of language disorders in children.
Full article: University of Texas at Dallas
Stuttering may be the result of a glitch in the day-to-day process by which cellular components in key regions of the brain are broken down and recycled, says a study in the Feb. 10 Online First issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The study, led by researchers at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), part of the National Institutes of Health, has identified three genes as a source of stuttering in volunteers in Pakistan, the United States, and England.
Full article: e! Science News
Pacifier, baby bottle or finger sucking may hamper a child’s speech development if the habit goes on too long. In a study that took place in Patagonia, Chile, researchers associated the persistence of these sucking habits with an increased risk of speech disorders in preschool children. The children were more likely to have difficulty producing certain word sounds and to simplify their pronunciation.
Full article: EurekAlert
Rresearchers identify gene associated with language, speech and reading disorders.
Full article: AlphaGalileo
A rare and mysterious syndrome that causes people to sound foreign has become even more baffling. Until now, the condition has been linked with damage in certain brain areas, but researchers have found two people with no trace of brain damage who have nevertheless sounded foreign since childhood.
Full article: New Scientist
Researchers know that alcoholism can damage the brain’s frontal lobes and cerebellum, regions involved in language processing. Nonetheless, alcoholics’ language skills appear to be relatively spared from alcohol’s damaging effects. New findings suggest the brain maintains language skills by drawing upon other systems that would normally be used to perform other tasks simultaneously.
Full article: EurekAlert
Children with a skull deformity called metopic synostosis have a high rate of speech and language impairments, but this risk is unrelated to the severity of the skull defect, reports a study in the January Journal of Craniofacial Surgery.
Full article: NewsWise
Scientists have identified the first gene that is associated with a common childhood language disorder, known as specific language impairment (SLI). The gene – CNTNAP2 – has also been recently implicated in autism, and could represent a crucial genetic link between the two disorders.
Full article: Medical News Today
What began as an informal presentation by a clinical linguist to a group of philosophers, has led to some surprising discoveries about the communicative language abilities of people with autism. …
Read the news release at Science Daily
New studies conducted by Professor of Neuroscience April Benasich and her Infancy Studies Laboratory at Rutgers University in Newark are revealing new and exciting clues about how infant brains begin to acquire language and paving the way for correcting language difficulties at a time when the brain is most able to change.
Read the full news article at EurekAlert
Researchers at UCL (University College London) have discovered that a system in the brain for processing grammar is impaired in some children with specific language impairment (SLI), but that these children compensate with a different brain area. The findings offer new hope for sufferers of SLI, which affects seven per cent of children and is a major cause of many not reaching their educational potential. To date, it has not been clear whether these children generally struggle to process language, or whether they have specific problems with grammar. The UCL findings reveal the latter for a sub-group (G-SLI), and suggest that educational methods that enhance these compensatory mechanisms may help such children overcome their difficulties. …
Read the full news article at University College London news room
Researchers at UCL (University College London) have discovered that a system in the brain for processing grammar is impaired in some children with specific language impairment (SLI), but that these children compensate with a different brain area. The findings offer new hope for sufferers of SLI, which affects seven per cent of children and is a major cause of many not reaching their educational potential. To date, it has not been clear whether these children generally struggle to process language, or whether they have specific problems with grammar. The UCL findings reveal the latter for a sub-group (G-SLI), and suggest that educational methods that enhance these compensatory mechanisms may help such children overcome their difficulties. …
Read the full news article at AlphaGalileo
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