Eletrophysiological auditory evaluation in stutterers pre and post treatment.

BACKGROUND: stuttering is a speech fluency disorder. Auditory evoked potentials (AEP) are electrophysiological tests that are being used as an instrument to establish the diagnosis of several disorders as well as to assess therapeutic outcomes.

AIM: 1 - to characterize the AEP of individuals with stuttering in comparison to a control group; 2 - to verify the amelioration of these potentials post speech-language treatment.

METHOD: the research sample was composed by 8 adult males with stuttering - research group (RG), with ages ranging from 18 to 30 years, and 8 normally fluent adult males - control group (CG), within the same age range. Each group was assessed twice through brainstem auditory evoked response (BAER), middle latency response (MLR) and P300; assessments were carried out with a three months interval.

RESULTS: pre therapeutic outcomes - altered BAER results in one individual of the RG; altered MLR results in two individuals of the RG and in one individual of the CG; altered P300 results in two individuals of the RG. Comparison between pre and post speech-language treatment results indicate: BAER - decrease in wave I latency in 66.7% of the ears in the RG; MLR - a 16.7% decrease in wave PA latency in C3 for the RG; P300 latency decreased by 58.7% in both groups.

CONCLUSION: the findings of this study indicate that MLR and P300 were the potentials that better characterized both groups and the three AEP expressed the neural plasticity post-speech-language treatment.