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From: Alyssa Staehler
Date: 05 Oct 2012
Time: 18:04:27 -0500
Remote Name: 66.190.13.147
This is such an intriguing article. I found myself not only discussing it with current graduate student clinicians, but also reading and re-reading it several times throughout the past few days. Personally, it is very interesting to me that sleep-disordered breathing could have such a negative impact on such important aspects of the brain such as the hippocampus and the frontal cortex on children between the ages of 6-16. These components are very essential for language and can be so highly affected by such a common disorder like snoring (approximately 30-50% of the United States snores). In addition, I never took into account that not having a routine to your sleep pattern can highly disrupt your REM cycle which is needed for intensive muscle relaxation. For example, it was noted that if a school-aged child does not get the recommended 10-11 hours of sleep the REM cycle will negatively be affected which, in return, increases muscle tension in muscles necessary for speech. Consequently, this can then make stuttering worse in certain individuals. The whole correlation of sleep and stuttering is a new idea for me as a graduate student clinician and I would love to read more research on this topic. I found this article very fascinating and look forward to researching more about the lack of sleep in correlation with disfluency and stuttering in upcoming years.