Schedule of Events | Symposia

Differences in the timing of action preparation in people who stutter

Poster Session F - Tuesday, April 1, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom
Also presenting in Data Blitz Session 3 - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm EDT, Constitution A.

Irene Echeverria-Altuna^1,2, Birtan Demirel², Sage Boettcher², Kia Nobre^1,2, Kate Watkins²; ¹Yale University, ²University of Oxford

Stuttering involves interruptions to the smooth flow of speech and is suggested to arise from differences in the internal timing of speech. Consistently, speech fluency can be induced in people who stutter using external cues to time speech production. Recent studies have reliably shown differences in mu/beta (8-30 Hz) frequency M/EEG (magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography) activity patterns prior to speech production in people who stutter. However, whether this reflects a speech-specific alteration or a more general anomaly in motor control remains unknown. Also uncharted is the extent to which the temporal coordination of action preparation is affected in people who stutter. Here, we developed a working-memory task in which participants shifted between hand-action plans as a function of internally driven temporal expectations. In this task, the dynamic prioritisation of action plans was mirrored by an action-specific and temporally tuned modulation of mu/beta (8-30 Hz) frequency activity as measured with MEG in both people who stutter (n = 20) and typically fluent speakers (n = 20). Intriguingly, despite showing identical performance in the task, people who stutter differed from typically fluent speakers in the temporal pattern of mu/beta activity modulation when shifting between internal action plans. These findings suggest that stuttering may be linked to more general differences in the timing of action preparation.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Motor control