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Pete Jones
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | In 1988 the boffins discovered it can get out of kilter and stimulating it with electrical implants under the skin led to measurable improvements in mental and physical health. |
This might be the same technique used to help stutterers. I remember a thing where if you somehow interrupted the stutterers "normal" brain patterns/flow, they were snapped out of the stuttering loops that they can get on.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This is a common delusion about stuttering. I thought it had by now been established beyond reasonable doubt that stuttering is caused by a physically malfunctioning part of the oesophagus/ sound box/ whatever. As is routine with things for which there is no known (or practical) cure, stutterers are assumed to be psychologically-damaged in some way.
However it is true there are a number of ways to ameliorate the condition. Singing, for example, is rarely affected. 'Interrupting the brain patterns/flow' is another technique taught to stutterers. Or 'Relax and start again' as we speech therapists put it.
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Pete Jones
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | stuttering is caused by a physically malfunctioning part of the oesophagus/ sound box/ whatever. |
I'd never heard this, but ok, I can buy it.
| As is routine with things for which there is no known (or practical) cure, stutterers are assumed to be psychologically-damaged in some way. |
The use of the word "psychologically" begs the question that we're discussing in the thread. Do you mean psychological damage or brain malfunction? I meant brain malfunction, which I take to be just as much a physical malfunction in the brain meat as a malfunction of the esophagus/sound box.
Stuttering is a hiccup in the brain (or the esophagus), not the mind/psyche (at least in the orthodox way of discussing those thing). But it gets quickly murky: any problem of regulation even in the esophagus might be laid at the doorstep of the brain, ultimately. If a stutter is a muscular problem of the voice box (or whatever), what governs the muscles? I would think it is the part of the brain that governs involuntary internal physiology/actions.
Whatever the case, I agree with your denigration of the idea that we should equate it to psychological damage. But the definition of terms might still be a disconnect between us! For instance, I don't think "mental illness" is a thing
[scrambles to search AEL for mentions of Thomas Szasz]
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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stuttering is caused by a physically malfunctioning part of the oesophagus/ sound box/ whatever.
I'd never heard this, but ok, I can buy it. |
It's pretty weird, if you think about it, that a physical cause was not assumed from the off. But it's like lunatics being thought to be lunatics because of stress or a broken home or whatever, rather than a physical malfunction of the brain.
| The use of the word "psychologically" begs the question that we're discussing in the thread. |
No, we're not. 'Psychological' factors (in the psychiatric sense) haven't come into it, as far as I know.
| Do you mean psychological damage or brain malfunction? I meant brain malfunction, which I take to be just as much a physical malfunction in the brain meat as a malfunction of the esophagus/ sound box. |
Of course it is. When I referred to 'oesophagus/ sound box/ whatever' the whatever would cover physical impairment of the brain.
| Stuttering is a hiccup in the brain (or the esophagus), not the mind/psyche (at least in the orthodox way of discussing those thing). |
Absolutely. Though I don't think for one moment it is anything to do with impairment of brain circuitry. Stuttering is so commonplace and so uniform in its characteristics, it would be unlikely in the extreme to be a matter of impairment of the circuitry in the tiny part of the brain given over to speech. (And I mean the physical delivery of speech, not what is being said--there is no evidence that stutterers are intellectually different from non-stutterers.)
| But it gets quickly murky: any problem of regulation even in the esophagus might be laid at the doorstep of the brain, ultimately. |
That breaks an important rule of AE: one input, one output. If the esophagus is faulty there is no call to rope the brain into it. The stutterer's brain knows what it is trying to say, the esophagus is unable to carry out its instructions.
| If a stutter is a muscular problem of the voice box (or whatever), what governs the muscles? I would think it is the part of the brain that governs involuntary internal physiology/actions. |
I'm going for muscular problem. You'll be telling me next it isn't my sprained ankle that's making me walk with stuttering steps, it's the brain's fault.
| Whatever the case, I agree with your denigration of the idea that we should equate it to psychological damage. |
Doesn't sound like it to me.
| But the definition of terms might still be a disconnect between us! |
No, you're getting it wrong.
| For instance, I don't think "mental illness" is a thing |
A for instance of what? Sounds like a whole new 'thing' to me.
[scrambles to search AEL for mentions of Thomas Szasz]
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I hope you don't find any trace of that old git.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I am presently watching a bailiff negotiating with a female football agent over a debt of £200,000 she owes a Premiership footballer. He (the bailiff) has quite a severe stammer. This would appear to be a handicap in verbal negotiations but maybe not in this case. The party of the other part hasn't much choice but to wait patiently while her options are outlined on account of the stutterer just having clamped her car on the driveway.
More generally, a stutter is both bad (it severely diminishes the sense of menace that is part and parcel of the bailiff's armoury) but also good (it forces the plaintiff into a 'human' relationship with the bailiff, something not often achieved).
I did wonder, pace Pete, whether he was employing his brain to vary the stutter--that would be most advantageous--but I don't think he can. Though he might stop referring to 'two hundred and fifteen thousand pounds and seventy-nine pence' quite so often.
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