Some years ago, I was active in volunteer work on behalf of people who stutter. I was especially active during fifteen years, between 1988 and 2003. On rare but consequential occasions, this meant spending up to sixteen hours a day on volunteer work. On even more rare occasions, I would also stay up all night to meet some deadline for a volunteer project. Volunteer work at such a level of intensity is now for me but a distant memory.  

Over the last 30 years, much of the research in stuttering has focused on understanding neural processes that may play a role in speech disfluency. A lot has been learned but still much remains to be understood. My objective in this article is to provide a concise overview of current research focused on the role of brain processes in developmental stuttering. It is based on a presentation I gave at the annual meeting of the Canadian Stuttering Association in Kingston in 2025.

I began stuttering at the age of three. I remember reading a preschool report card where my teachers had noted my stutter. When my mom asked our doctor about it, he reassured her that it was just a phase—something I would eventually “grow out of.” He explained that stuttering often runs in families and is more common in boys. I was a girl with no known family history of stuttering, and, as it turned out, my stutter would stay with me into adulthood.

Photo: Tony Intas, Rosalee Shenker and Lisa Wilder

I have been lucky enough to live in different parts of Canada in my life, and in the 1990s I moved to Vancouver, BC to attend college. While there, I got involved in the British Columbia Association of People Who Stutter (BCAPS), a provincial entity that assisted people who stutter with public advocacy, support groups, and funding for speech therapy.

I don’t remember the day I started stuttering.

But I remember an entire life shaped by it.

I don’t remember every word I struggled to say.

But I remember the people who couldn’t wait for me to finish.

For almost forty years, I believed that stuttering was the greatest problem in my life. I thought that if I spoke fluently, I would be braver and more confident. That finding a job would be easier. That I would speak up more often, meet more people, and pursue my dreams.