Dr Paul Sowman - Early Career Research of the Year Award

Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science

Length: 1:52 minutes

His focuses on motor control in human speech. He is particularly interested in the neurological basis of stuttering. He has initiated a research program that will characterise the neural network for speech in preschool age stutterers. This represents an important step forward because current knowledge of the brain basis of stuttering is based almost exclusively on adult studies which are unable to differentiate between compensatory brain changes that occur as a reaction to stuttering and those brain anomalies which cause stuttering. Studying the brains of very young stutterers could lead us to uncover the causative anomalies associated with stuttering.