That’s why I started with “I wonder if..” I’m very aware that it’s just a correlation. We also still don’t know if stuttering causes the changes in blood flow or vise versa. We still don’t understand much of anything tbh. I just feel like much of the research has ignored the social and psychological aspects of stuttering and focused solely on the neurological aspect, which we still can’t infer between cause or effect. And by trauma I don’t necessarily mean a big traumatic event but anything that had a traumatizing effect like childhood neglect/bullying etc. By procedural memory I meant a pattern of reacting (e.g muscles in speech production tensing up) that were activated in response to a threat (e.g. rejection/abandonment from speaking up)