Author(s)

Vickie Y. Yu¹, Darren S. Kadis², Debra Goshulak³, Aravind K. Namasivayam⁴, Margit Pukonen³, Robert M. Kroll^3,4, Luc F. De Nil⁴, Elizabeth W. Pang^5,6*

¹Department of Communication Disorders and Sciences, California State University Northridge, California, USA.
²Division of Neurology and Pediatric Neuroimaging Research Consortium, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, USA.
³The Speech & Stuttering Institute, Toronto, Canada.
⁴Department of Speech-Language Pathology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
⁵Neurosciences and Mental Health, Sick Kids Research Institute, Toronto, Canada.
⁶Division of Neurology, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada.

We present the novel use of a neuroimaging technique, magnetoenceph-alography (MEG), for examining therapy-related changes in neural activity during a speech and a non-speech motor task in children with speech sound disorders (SSD). Nine children (mean age = 4.2 years) with SSD were scanned in the MEG before and after an eight-week course of intensive motor speech therapy. MEG tasks involved an oromotor and a syllable production task. MEG analyses identified significant post-therapy changes in brain regions related to oromotor control and speech production. Behavioral assessments showed significant improvements on measures of motor speech skills and articulation following intervention. This is the first demonstration of the ability of MEG to: 1) capture brain activations resulting from oromotor movements and simple syllable production in young children, and 2) capture brain changes related to speech therapy. As the findings from this study are promising, we discuss directions for the design of future studies to further examine specific neural dysfunctions in speech sound disorders.

Speech Sound Disorders, Children, Intervention, Neuroimaging, Speech Production

Yu, V. , Kadis, D. , Goshulak, D. , Namasivayam, A. , Pukonen, M. , Kroll, R. , De Nil, L. and Pang, E. (2018) Impact of Motor Speech Intervention on Neural Activity in Children with Speech Sound Disorders: Use of Magnetoencephalography. Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science, 8, 415-429. doi: 10.4236/jbbs.2018.87026.