Contemporary clinical conversations about stuttering: What does brain imaging research mean to clinicians?

Purpose: To discuss among neuroscientists and community speech-language pathologists what brain imaging research means to clinicians.

Method: Two university neuroscientists and two speech-language pathologists in private practice discussed the matter. Written conversational turns in an exchange were limited to 100 words each. When that written dialogue was concluded, each participant provided 200 words of final reflection about the matter.

Result: For now, neuroscience treatments are not available for clinicians to use. But sometime in the future, a critical mass of neuroscientists will likely produce such treatments. The neuroscientists expressed diverse views about the methods that might be used for that to occur.

Conclusion: Neuroscience does have practical clinical application at present and, in a way, that does not exclude a concurrent influence of the social model of disability. As such, the current practices of clinicians are supported by basic neuroscience research.