Rhythm Workers<\/a>, a rhythm game developed by team member Simone Dalla Bella, an UdeM psychology professor and co-director of BRAMS. The game has been used with other clinical groups, including people with Parkinson\u2019s disease and ADHD.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe concept is simple: players tap the screen of a cellphone in time with the music being played, building virtual structures as their accuracy improves.<\/p>\n
In the pilot study, children aged 9 to 12 who stutter played the game for three weeks, averaging 300 minutes of practice. Compared to a control group playing a non-rhythmic game, the Rhythm Workers players exhibited remarkable improvement.<\/p>\n
They made fewer speech-motor errors and showed reduced disfluency in both spontaneous and read-aloud speech. They also demonstrated better attention control.<\/p>\n
Most notably, the children whose rhythmic skills improved the most also experienced the greatest reduction in stuttering.<\/p>\n
Why rhythm matters<\/p>\n
According to Falk, training the brain to process rhythm without speaking can indirectly enhance speech because rhythm and speech share common neural resources. Promoting plasticity in these neural networks can lead to improvements in other motor channels.<\/p>\n
\u201cSynchronizing to a beat\u00a0engages a broad brain network, including the basal ganglia, thalamus, motor cortex and cerebellum,\u201d Falk explained. \u201cThis network is critical for fine motor control, particularly timing\u2014knowing when I am able to pronounce the next syllable\u2014 and the synchronization of auditory and motor signals.”<\/p>\n
In people who stutter, this network often shows alterations, leading to difficulties predicting the right moment to begin a sound. The result is blocks, repetitions and drawn-out syllables.<\/p>\n
\u201cStuttering is essentially a motor speech deficit related to problems synchronizing what we articulate with what we expect to hear when we speak,\u201d Falk said. \u201cSo training synchronization nonverbally through musical rhythm could help.\u201d<\/p>\n
A tool to complement therapy<\/p>\n
While the results are promising for a non-invasive, fun, home-based intervention, Falk urges caution: the study had a small sample size of just 21 participants. A larger, randomized controlled trial\u2014ideally across Canada \u2014is now being planned.<\/p>\n
Falk also stresses the importance of treating stuttering holistically.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cStuttering is more than a motor challenge,\u201d she said. \u201cIt affects self-confidence, social interaction and emotional well-being, especially in adolescence. Any effective treatment must therefore be comprehensive, combining work on fluency and acceptance, psychosocial support, and a caring environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The goal, therefore, is not to replace speech therapy but to complement existing therapies with nonverbal rhythmic training.<\/p>\n
Still, the idea that something as simple as tapping along to the beat could help children speak more smoothly is music to anyone’s ears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than a game The research team used\u00a0Rhythm Workers, a rhythm game developed by team member Simone Dalla…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[49,48,206803,54339,109785,109786,874,84,8680,994,206802,206801,206800],"class_list":["post-525592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-department-of-linguistics-and-translation","tag-department-of-psychology","tag-faculty-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-fas","tag-gaming","tag-health","tag-psychology","tag-research","tag-simone-dalla-bella","tag-simone-falk","tag-speech-therapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}