| 研究実績の概要 |
The purpose of this research is to test the efficacy of a speech therapy technique, known as the video self-modeling (VSM), in adults who stutter using a combination of functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) techniques along with clinical objective and subjective measurements. In fiscal year 2014, the following achievements have been reached:
Achievement 1: VSM treatment procedure (i.e., develop stutter-free video, design and collect data with clinical subjective/objective assessment tools) was developed successfully. The Social Anxiety Scale-Japanese (LSAS-J) was used to evaluate treatment outcomes in 10 adults who stutter. Seven out of ten participants (70%) reported total scores more than the cut-off of 30, indicating the presence of social anxiety disorder in these participants before treatment. This finding also raises our concern to assess participants’ anxiety level on their first visit to seek for stuttering treatment in order to provide better speech intervention service for them.
Achievement 2: We have successfully developed a fMRI paradigm to determine whether there are differences in brain activation patterns between control subjects and adults who stutter. We found that cerebellar activation was absent in the Control group while apparent in the Stuttering group, suggesting that the Stuttering group may recruit the cerebellum may act as a “compensatory” way to produce fluent speech.
|
