>Thanks for your questions! You were the first one to post ;-). And, it's a great set of questions. I'll offer a few thoughts, and Seth will chime in as well. > >First, regarding neuroplasticity -- indeed, we know that brains change and develop throughout our lives. There's great research showing just how quickly changes can occur (see the literature on learning to juggle if you haven't done it...it's fascinating). We know that brains change during therapy, for example, but we don't yet know how durable those changes are. There's some interesting research going on examining changes in the brain before/after therapy other other experiences. This will be a fruitful area of research in the coming years, but there's still much that we don't know. > >Here's how this plays out in a practical sense, though: People often will say that if people who stutter can only practice speech strategies enough, that will eventually make them become "natural" and "normal" ways of speaking. Sadly, that doesn't appear to be the case. It takes constant and ongoing practice in order to use various fluency strategies. The problem with that is that people will often tell people who stutter to just "practice more" or "do it all the time" when that's simply not feasible. It puts a lot of negative pressure on people to become something they are not, and leads to a lot of unhappiness for people who stutter. Truly, I think that our profession of speech-language pathology has to become a lot more understanding in order to better help people who stutter. > >I'll say more about that in response to other posts... I'll hit reply now and then provide answers to the rest of the questions as we go.