*Continuation:* # A completely different cognitive experience Reading these studies changed the way I understand stuttering. Before I learned about the neurological studies surrounding stuttering, I thought of my disorder only in light of its most tangible aspect: dysfluent speech. I understood my stutter as a single problem that others did not have. Now I see stuttering as a constellation of traits and neurological differences that change the way I perceive the world and act in it. It just so happens that some of these differences impact my ability to speak fluently. Having a stutter isn't just blocked speech; it's a completely different cognitive experience. Reading about the effect of syntactic complexity made me re-evaluate how my stutter could affect more than just my speech. In general, I try to keep my writing syntactically simple. I thought I did that because simple words are more digestible; my ego told me I wrote simply because I was so humble and unpretentious. Now that I better understand how syntactic complexity increases dysfluency, I suspect I subconsciously recognized that syntactically complex words decrease my fluency, so I tend to speak with a simple vocabulary. And because good writing has a conversational tone, I try to write the same way I talk: with simple, easy words. I was, however, quite surprised by the research on the internal timing deficit in stutterers. Music is my favorite artistic medium; I thought that if I ever played music as a hobby, I would play drums. Of the instruments that make up the prototypical rock band, I feel like my personality best matches that of drummers. Plus, I consider myself to be a pretty decent dancer, which requires rhythm. However, since reading multiple studies about faulty internal timing in stutterers, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not meant to be a drummer. My ability to tune into the beat of a song is rock solid, but I've since noticed that my self-generated beats quickly become inconsistent. I can be perfectly on a beat, then I'll inexplicably lose it and have to work to find it again after I've already flubbed a few beats. I've known I had hearing issues for the past decade. Sometimes it takes an extra second after someone finishes talking for me to actually make sense of what they said. I'll start asking a follow-up question before stopping mid-sentence and saying "..oh yeah, you literally just said that." And I'm terrible at tuning into someone's voice while in a loud environment. I've been a lip reader since I was young, probably because of my occasional difficulties processing speech. I had always assumed everyone else was lip reading, too. Only in the past few years have I realized that not everyone can watch a football game and lip-read exactly what an athlete just yelled at his teammate. Until I learned about the science behind stuttering, I thought my hearing issues came from hearing loss; after all, I've worked in loud environments, listened to loud music through headphones, and been to plenty of loud concerts. Tinnitus doesn't make everything quieter; its main effect is to reduce the clarity of your hearing - vital for listening to speech - and your ability to tune out environmental noise. It just so happens that the auditory deficits in stuttering match up perfectly with both of those symptoms. It is somewhat comforting to know my hearing issues probably come from a genetic disorder, not poor decisions from my youth. It also makes me think about people who have some of the developmental deficiencies of stuttering, but not all. My dad has the same problems listening to conversations in loud environments. He also had trouble listening to me when I was a kid and spoke really fast. Whenever I squeezed two paragraphs of words into two seconds of speech, he would squint his eyes and tilt his head, then tell me to slow down and start over. Now that I understand that stuttering does not have any one single cause, and in light of my genetic connection with my father, I wonder if some people have only some of the pathologies that cause stuttering. They may have only a portion of the deficiencies, so they have minor issues - like processing rapid speech - but do not regularly experience blocks. For instance, some people have poor diction, but do not stutter. Their speech motor programs may be weak or incomplete, but they don't have the rest of the constellation of stuttering pathologies. # Neuroplasticity It can be difficult to digest the deep-seated nature of stuttering’s neurological roots, but there’s good news as well. Everything covered in this chapter is a neurological deficit that has been demonstrated in rigorous scientific studies and verified by multiple researchers, but that doesn't mean they are life sentences. The brain can compensate for deficits in one area of the brain by incorporating other areas of the brain or strengthening supporting area in a what's called \*neuroplasticity\*. Multiple studies have demonstrated that the brain can use neuroplasticity to mitigate the issues caused by stuttering. The core pathologies of stuttering can lead the brain into adapting in a decentralized, haphazard way, a response which correlates with the most severe stutters. However, multiple studies have proven that speech therapy reliably normalizes these maladaptive patterns and increases fluency. However, the good news doesn't end there. It's possible for stutterers to experience fluency as a baseline; I know from my own experience, and I've seen others do the same. We know this is possible, because researchers have found a pattern of brain activation that is unique to mostly-fluent stutterers. In that mode, stuttering is still a threat, and it still rears its ugly head from time-to-time, but fluent speech can become the norm.