The candidate proposes a five year period of support to permit h to develop her research skills so that she may become an independent research scientist capable of utilizing sophisticated techniques to perform quantitativ analyses of MRI data. In this proposal she will employ these techniques to investigate the neurobiologic substrate of stuttering, but she suggests that t techniques may ultimately be used to address a variety of brain-behavior relations in clinical populations. Specific aspects of the proposal which warrant attention include the following: The major focus of research has been the attempt to define the anatomic basis cognitive and other brain functions by means of the quantitative analysis of M images. She lists 8 publications in peer-reviewed journals, 3 manuscripts currently In Press and 4 manuscripts under review. She is first author of 6 o the published/in press manuscripts. Research Program (modified from the PI's Specific Aims): The major goal of th project is to study neuroanatomic models of stuttering. To achieve these goal the PI proposes to conduct four experiments that investigate the relationship behavioral asymmetries in people who stutter and nonstutterers. Experiment 1 will investigate the relationship of speech production to asymmetries in anterior perisylvian speech-language regions (pars triangularis pars opercularis). Experiment 2 will investigate the relationship between speech perception asymmetries in posterior speech-language regions (planum temporale). Experiment 3 will investigate the relationship between motor dexterity and asymmetries in cortical and subcortical motor regions (central suclus, globus plallidus). Experiments 1, 2, and 3 will be limited to consistent right handers. As hand preference may be an important independent variable, left handed stutterers and left handed nonstutterers will be investigated in Experiment 4 using the same measures to be employed in Experiments 1, 2, and 3. This project will focus on cerebral dominance in stutterers. The major postulate of the study is that people who stutter have anatomic and behavioral anomalies of dominance.
