tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12602489.post6691756989347967549..comments2024-03-24T15:07:18.773+01:00Comments on The Stuttering Brain: More on Rex and genesTom Weidighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02084153394215001999noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12602489.post-4000748899432088082009-05-21T06:18:56.153+02:002009-05-21T06:18:56.153+02:00Okay, so we take into account neural plasticity. W...Okay, so we take into account neural plasticity. What is wrong with understanding the effects of stuttering on the brain over time?<br />Seems like a good research project/question.<br /><br />Look at a stuttering brain from baby to age 5 to age 10 to adult.<br /><br />Tom will have to respond to the misrepresenting part.KJnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12602489.post-67381245512474644472009-05-21T02:09:21.001+02:002009-05-21T02:09:21.001+02:00I totaly agree with Rex, and I do see that Tom has...I totaly agree with Rex, and I do see that Tom has been misrepresenting his arguments.<br /><br />Comparing a stutter's brain with a non-stutter's brain leads to a dead end because the very fact that a person stutters for years and years has an affect on the brain. Just like a person who plays the piano for years has a differnt brain structure than a person who doesnt. But it doesnt mean that the pianoplayer was born with that brain structurePKnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12602489.post-30069048819749925602009-05-20T09:20:51.997+02:002009-05-20T09:20:51.997+02:00Hey Rex, Tom said stuttering is Not Multi-factoria...Hey Rex, Tom said stuttering is Not Multi-factorial.<br /><br />Hey Tom, why are you bald? What are the causes of baldness, thought it was caused by genetic...sure baldness can be due to stress and other health reasons. But for the majority of the people...genetic??<br /><br />Rex has a point...<br /><br />But what is wrong with:<br /><br />"let's compare a stutterer's brain with a fluent person's brain and let's see if we can find a discrepancy".KJnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12602489.post-41758921423966047372009-05-20T08:49:10.197+02:002009-05-20T08:49:10.197+02:00Tom,
I'm sorry to say it because you seem like a...Tom, <br /><br />I'm sorry to say it because you seem like a nice guy, but you are sinking to new lows. <br />You said:<br />"He has already moved towards admitting that genetics does play a role, but still thinks that the non-genetics part must be social environment."<br /><br />I never said that genetics doesn't play a role. And I never ever used the words "social environment". Environmental factors include many things - external environments, such as parents, schools, traumatic experiences. But they also include *internal* factors - such as genes affecting other genes. <br />Of course genes plays a role ... you are full of genes, and one may even argue that your genes indirectly made you become a physicist or made you create this blog. But such an argument is flawed because you are not defined by your genes alone. Had you been taken away from your parents after birth and raised in a jungle, you would never be thinking about the possibility of sterile neutrinos interacting with Higgs bosons causing neutrinos to have mass, or playing a Nimzo-Indian. Or, had you been hit in the head when you were little, causing brain damage, your life would have turned out very differently. This is what I mean by "environmental factors", and that is the way geneticists use the word.<br /><br />You also wrote:<br />"Second, the twin studies do not show that environmental factors play a significant role."<br /><br />Of course they do play a significant role - for the very reasons I describe above. Let's forget about stuttering for the moment. Take 2 twin embryos. They do not share identical environments (experiences) in the womb and they do not share identical environments (experiences) outside the womb when they are born. That's why they are different and individual, even though they have identical genes. The studies I cited show that environmental factors play a very significant role; as a stutterer, this is obvious to me even without studies.<br /><br />In your responses to me, you have totally misunderstood my arguments, and I don't know if that was intentional or not.<br /><br />Now, as for the competency of the researchers. You wrote:<br />"ALL the scientists who work in these areas are professional scientists. Most of them are not outstanding scientists, but they apply the standards of their fields well."<br /><br />I do read some of the papers occasionally, and I find them of very poor standard compared to the papers in other scientific fields - and I know you do too. In the past 10 years, most of the brain imaging studies related to stuttering appear to be of the type "let's compare a stutterer's brain with a fluent person's brain and let's see if we can find a discrepancy". Such approaches lead nowhere. Genetic studies are almost as ridiculous. For example, I participated in a genetic study 5 years ago at a stutterer's convention. They presumeably compared my DNA (and those of other attendees) with normal DNA in order to find discrepancies. A couple of years later, we got the results ... which was as I had expected ... no result. What were they trying to find? A stuttering gene? a gene that directly causes people to stutter? They'll never find such a thing. They don't appear to realize that stuttering is most probably multi-factorial and can have different root-causes - just like baldness ... two bald people may look similarly bald, but the causes of their respective baldness is totally different.<br /><br />But you don't need good old Rex to tell you these things. The results of decades of stuttering research speak for themselves. <br /><br />Now, let's see how you distort my arguments this time :)Rexnoreply@blogger.com