25 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
The goal of this longitudinal research is to learn why some children "grow out" of stuttering, while others persist. Children who do and do not stutter aged 3-6 years are eligible to participate in our study. During the study, children's speech and language abilities will be assessed with standardized assessments, and they complete several child-friendly experiments. During these experiments, brain activity will be recorded using specialized caps while children describe pictures, children will speak in two virtual-reality scenarios, and produce speech while keeping to a beat.
The purposes of this study are to 1) investigate potential speech, language, and psychosocial contributions to the experience of stuttering in monolingual and multilingual speakers, and to 2) evaluate interdisciplinary, telehealth, and speech-language pathology treatment methods and clinical training specific to fluency disorders.
This study will compare speech variability between preschool-age children who stutter and typically fluent, age-matched peers. Differences in emotional reactivity, regulation and speech motor control have been implicated in stuttering development in children. This study seeks to understand further how these processes interact. Children will repeat a simple phrase after viewing age-appropriate images of either negative or neutral valence to assess speech motor control.
This research is being done to better understand stuttering, specifically how people who stutter may process and/or produce speech. Eligible participants enrolled will complete a variety of computer and speech-based tasks on up to 2 visits.
This is a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, Phase 2 exploratory study in adult subjects with childhood onset fluency disorder.
The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of ecopipam in reducing stuttering symptoms. It is hypothesized that ecopipam effectively reduces stuttering symptoms as measured on the SSI-IV total score, the CGI, SSS and OASES.
The purpose of this research study is to find out the potential benefits and safety of asenapine (Saphris®) in adults who suffer from the developmental form of stuttering. It is hypothesized that individuals who are randomly assigned to asenapine will have an improvement in speech as compared to a placebo.
The purpose of this research project is to test the effects of exposure of different forms of tactile speech feedback on overt stuttering frequency.
A multicenter, randomized, 3 arm, placebo-controlled clinical trial to assess the efficacy, safety and tolerability of pagoclone for adults with stuttering.
This study will use positron emission tomography (PET) to examine the role of the chemical messenger dopamine in stuttering. It will measure and compare the number of dopamine receptors and the amount of dopamine released in the brains of stutterers with that of normal volunteers. The results may provide information about how drugs that block dopamine's effect might work to enable fluent speech. Healthy normal volunteers and people with developmental stuttering between the ages of 18 and 55 may be eligible for this study. Candidates will be screened with a medical history and possibly a physical examination and laboratory tests. Participants will have a hearing test and cognitive function tests to measure speech, language, memory and visual skills. In addition, they will undergo the following procedures: * PET scanning to measure brain blood flow and dopamine distribution in the brain. PET uses radioactive materials to show cellular activity in specific tissues of the body. Before starting the procedure, a thin plastic tube (intravenous, or IV line) is placed in a vein in each arm of the subject and a special plastic mask is molded to the face. (The mask is used to insure that the position of the head does not change during the scan.) For the scan, the subject lies on a bed that is positioned into the scanner. A preliminary "transmission" scan is done to make necessary measurements and adjustments. Following this scan, 10 injections of radioactive water are given through an IV line. During these injections, the subject performs a series of speech tasks-such as singing, telling a story, or reciting nursery rhymes-that will elicit either fluent speech or stuttering. A special camera detects the radiation emitted and produces images of brain blood flow during stuttering and normal speech. Next, raclopride (a radioactive material that attaches to dopamine receptors on the cell surface) is given through an IV line and more pictures of the brain are taken. Fifty minutes after the raclopride injection, amphetamine-a drug that increases brain dopamine levels-is injected through the other IV line and more pictures are taken to show dopamine distribution in the brain. Fifty minutes after the amphetamine infusion, the IV lines are removed. * Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain to complement and interpret information from the PET scans. MRI uses a strong magnetic field and radio waves to show structural changes in tissues. The subject lies on a table surrounded by a metal cylinder (the scanner). During the procedure, which may take from 20 minutes to 2 hours, subjects may be asked to perform simple tasks, such as speaking or moving their arms. They can speak with a staff member via an intercom at all times during the procedure and can be moved out of the machine any time they request. Participants may be asked to return for up to two scanning sessions within a year. For these scans, only 1 injection of radioactive water will be given.
Stuttering is an abnormality in speech that affects the rhythm of speech. People who stutter know what they wish to say, but at the time are unable to say it because of involuntary repetition, unnecessary lengthening (prolongation), or early stopping (cessation). Stuttering is characterized by repetitions or prolongation of the first syllable, or silent prolongations, sometimes known as blocks. Researcher intend on studying the genetic basis for stuttering. The goal of the study is to find the genes that help cause stuttering and determine regions of the human genetic make-up (genome) that are linked to stuttering.. To do this researchers will study the patterns of inheritance in families who have had members who stutter. The study has two objectives. The first objective is to develop a large collection of DNA samples from individuals in stuttering families, that will include both members that stutter and who do not stutter. The second objective of the study will be to find out the basic combination of genes (genotype) making up all of the participants DNA. Once this is completed researchers hope to map out and find areas or regions of DNA that are linked to stuttering. Genetic linkage is the initial step in positional cloning, and the cloning of genes which predispose individuals to stuttering is a long term goal of this research study.\<TAB\>
Stuttering is an abnormality in speech that affects the rhythm of speech. People who stutter know what they wish to say, but at the time are unable to say it because of involuntary repetition, unnecessary lengthening (prolongation), or early stopping (cessation). This study is designed to increase understanding of the genetic factors that may relate to stuttering. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a protein found in the nucleus of all cells. It is responsible for carrying the genetic information of the organism. DNA provides the directions for making all of the substances in the human body. DNA can be linked together in small segments called genes. Genes can contain information about anything related to an organism. In order for researchers to determine what genes are directly related to stuttering they must conduct several types of studies. Linkage studies, are studies of families that have a lot of members who stutter from several generations. The linkage studies will be completed using adult individuals who are diagnosed as persons who stutter and persons who have never stuttered, from one or more families with large numbers of family members who have stuttered over several generations. Candidate gene studies, look closely at genes suspected to be related to stuttering in patients who may or may not have a significant family history of stuttering. By conducting these studies, researchers hope to learn more about genes related to stuttering and ultimately find out what causes stuttering.
The purpose of this study is to investigate how mild, noninvasive electrical brain stimulation affects speech relevant brain areas, which may in turn affect speech fluency and speaking-related brain activity in people that stutter. The long-term goal of this study is to test the therapeutic potential of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) for the treatment of stuttering. The study team hypothesizes that if stuttering involves impaired initiation of motor programs, delta-tuned tACS will strengthen communication between brain regions and decrease stuttering. Therefore, the study team delta-tuned sensorimotor tACS will be paired with fluency-induced speech (choral reading), which is hypothesized to decrease stuttering via improved auditory motor integration. However, if the primary impairment lies in planning of motor programs, the study team hypothesizes that theta-tuned tACS will strengthen communication between prefrontal and temporal brain regions and decrease stuttering.
The purpose of this research study is to understand how speech and language are processed in the brain. This study will provide information that may help with the understanding how speech and language are processed in children and whether there may be differences between children who stutter and children who do not stutter. This project will evaluate these neural processes for speech signals in children who stutter and control subjects through a battery of behavioral speech and language tests, electroencephalography-based (EEG) tasks, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and computational modeling.
This is a research study of the investigational drug, Pagoclone, in the treatment of persistent developmental stuttering (PDS), which includes frequent repetitions or prolongations of sounds or syllables or words, or frequent hesitations or pauses that disrupt the flow of speech. Pagoclone is an investigational drug, so it is not approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration.
The objective of the study is to determine the effects of pagoclone on the symptoms of Persistent Developmental Stuttering, using a flexible dosing titration regimen on persistent developmental stuttering in patients 18 to 65 years of age.
The specific purpose of this clinical trial is to compare performance on rhythm perception and production tasks between children who stutter and children who do not stutter. The overall project also aims to investigate how performance on rhythm tasks may be related to brain activity (non-clinical trial).
The goal of this clinical trial is to examine whether stuttering is associated with a tendency to attend more quickly or for longer durations to threat-related information in the environment (threat-related attention bias). The main questions it aims to answer are: Do adults who stutter, relative to adults who do not stutter, attend to threat-related stimuli more than neutral information? Are attentional biases observed across different types of threat or are they specific to threats related to stuttering experiences? Do measures of attention bias explain individual differences in psychological reactions among adults who stutter?
The purpose of the study is to use altered auditory vocal feedback to increase fluency in people who stutter and to examine changes in this effect over the course of a one month period occurring outside the laboratory setting.
Persistent developmental stuttering affects more than three million people in the United States, and it can have profound adverse effects on quality of life. Despite its prevalence and negative impact, stuttering has resisted explanation and effective treatment, due in large part to a poor understanding of the neural processing impairments underlying the disorder. The overall goal of this study is to improve understanding of the brain mechanisms involved in speech motor planning and how these are disrupted in neurogenic speech disorders, like stuttering. The investigators will do this through an integrated combination of experiments that involve speech production, functional MRI, and non-invasive brain stimulation. The study is designed to test hypotheses regarding the brain processes involved in learning and initiating new speech sound sequences and how those processes compare in persons with persistent developmental stuttering and those with typical speech development. These processes will be studied in both adults and children. Additionally, these processes will be investigated in patients with neurodegenerative speech disorders (primary progressive aphasia) to further inform the investigators understanding of the neural mechanisms that support speech motor sequence learning. Together these experiments will result in an improved account of the brain mechanisms underlying speech production in fluent speakers and individuals who stutter, thereby paving the way for the development of new therapies and technologies for addressing this disorder.
Research studies in stuttering have shown that activity patterns in certain brain areas differ in people who stutter compared to people who do not stutter when speaking. The purpose of this study is to investigate how mild, non-invasive brain stimulation applied consecutively for five days affects speech relevant brain areas, which may in turn affect speech fluency and speaking-related brain activity in people who stutter.
Stuttering negatively impacts communication and reduces the overall quality of life and well-being of individuals who stutter. This study will provide a strong foundation for developing neural and behavioral interventions for stuttering. Participants will be asked to name pictures, read words/sentences silently or aloud, and listen to speech and nonspeech sounds while their speech, muscle, and brain signals are collected. Some participants may also receive brain stimulation while reading and speaking.
The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of the brain's activity and organization in the development of speech disorders. It will compare brain activity in people with normal speech development with those who stutter or who have a phonological disorder (a deficit in how the brain processes speech sounds). Stuttering and phonological disorders emerge during the critical period of speech development between 2.5 and 12 years of age. During this period, the brain is much more adaptable for speech development than it is after puberty. This study will examine how the brain organization for speech production and perception develops normally during the critical period and how the normal pattern is altered when stuttering and phonological disorders become chronic problems, persisting throughout life. Volunteer adults and children with and without speech disorders may participate in this study. Eligibility screening will include a brief neurological and physical examination and tests to determine normal speech or a speech disorder. The speech testing will be videotaped. The subject will speak aloud, describe pictures, recall words or numbers, imitate speech sounds and words, and perform some listening tests. Study participants will undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study brain activity. For this procedure, the subject lies on a stretcher that is moved into a donut-shaped machine with a strong magnetic field. During the MRI scan, the subject will perform simple tasks, such as listening to speech or other sounds and saying nonsense words. The procedure should take less than 60 minutes, and usually takes from 20 to 40 minutes.
According to studies, speech disorders with unknown causes (idiopathic) affect approximately 5% of the population at some point in their life. Some of these disorders like, stuttering and cluttering, are known for being detected early, during speech development. Stuttering is characterized by sound and syllable repetitions and consonant/vowel prolongations. When stuttering is moderate to severe, it can interfere with a person's job and social activities. Speech articulation disorders are characterized by omissions, or substitutions of speech sounds. The speech of a person who clutters is often difficult to understand. People are often unaware of the errors they make when speaking causing treatment of the condition to be very difficult. The purpose of this research is to study an extended family whose members exhibit a pure form of speech articulation disorders In addition, the study will use data and information gathered from the study and use it to develop guidelines (criteria) for defining and differentiating patients with speech disorders.
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a technique used to investigate the functional activity of the brain. The PET technique allows doctors to study the normal biochemical and metabolic processes of the central nervous system of normal individuals and patients with neurologic illnesses without physical / structural damage to the brain. Radioactive water H215O in PET scans permits good visualization of areas of the brain related to speech. Most of the PET scan studies conducted have concentrated on learning about how language is formed and decoded. Few studies have been conducted on speech production. This study aims to use radioactive water (H215O) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET scan) to measure blood flow to different areas of the brain in order to better understand the mechanisms involved in speech motor control. When a region of the brain is active, it uses more fuel in the form of oxygen and sugar (glucose). As the brain uses more fuel it produces more waste products, carbon dioxide and water. Blood carries fuel to the brain and waste products away from the brain. As brain activity increases blood flow to and from the area of activity increases also. Knowing these facts, researchers can use radioactive chemicals (H215O) and PET scans to observe what areas of the brain are receiving more blood flow. Researchers will ask patients to perform tasks that will affect speech, voice, and language. At the same time patients will undergo a PET scan. The tasks are designed to help researchers observe the blood flow to brain areas associated with voicebox (laryngeal) functions, movement of muscles in the jaw, tongue, and mouth, and other aspects of motor speech. Special studies will be conducted to evaluate how certain therapies and tasks can draw out symptoms in illnesses in which speech and language are affected. Results of these tests will be used in other studies to evaluate the neurologic mechanisms of diseases like Tourette's syndrome and parkinson's disease.\<TAB\>