Brain imaging in children

During the past decade, many studies have been conducted on normal and disordered pediatric populations using brain imaging techniques once thought to be challenging for application in infants and children. This chapter reviews the potential and shortcomings of techniques used to study brain anatomy and function in young children, focusing on new knowledge regarding the brain basis for normal speech and language development, as well as developmental speech disorders such as stuttering. It discusses the current understanding to date based on these studies, and emphasizes the need to examine young children when considering developmental disorders. Recently published functional and structural MRI studies on children and adolescents who stutter replicate some of the findings reported from adult studies, pointing to trait-related deficits that may relate to the basis of developing stuttering. On the other hand, other deficits found in adults have not been replicated in children, indicating that some differences may represent changes in brain structure and function as a consequence of a lifetime of stuttering. These studies provide several new hypotheses for structural and functional deficits relating to stuttering. Research in younger children closer to stuttering onset is needed to address these hypotheses.