Thursday, June 18, 2009

Can Martians stutter?

One of your fellow readers asked an intriguing question:
I read an old sci-fi book recently called "Last and First Men" written by Olaf Stapledon in 1931. In that book, there is a race of martians who communicate not by speech, but by electromagnetic fields. They live side-by-side with humans, and eventually a new race of human is born. These new humans are able to communicate with each other directly from brain to brain by radio communication ... a kind of radiotelepathy. My question: if, in 100 years time, scientists are able to develop a device that would allow radiotelepathy between people, do you think that stutterers would still stutter in this mode of communication?
To be able to answer the question, I need to add more meat to it! Presumably the Martians do not have any speech (encode the motor sequences from information from the language areas) and motor control areas of the brain. They have a region that receives information from the language areas and encodes it into radio wave sequences which are sent to the motor regions that control the radio wave emitting "muscles". Effectively, the question asks whether it is a language or a speech motor control disorder. If the language region stutters, there is no difference.

I would say that stuttering is about the disturbed communication between the different brain regions involved in generating speech (principally on the speech and motor control regions rather than language areas). Thus, I would argue that there will be Martians who stutter because some, like some humans, have a stuttering radio wave system (due to genes and developmental issues), BUT the question was on whether stutterers would stutter. There I argue that they will not stutter, because everyone will get a system that does not stutter in the same way that everyone has a mobile that is free of noise (because all noisy mobiles are replaced).

So to conclude, some Martians will stutter, but stuttering humans on the radio channel will not!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You wrote:
"BUT the question was on whether stutterers would stutter."

Yes, that's the question I was asking.

You then wrote:
"There I argue that they will not stutter, because everyone will get a system that does not stutter in the same way that everyone has a mobile that is free of noise (because all noisy mobiles are replaced)."

You might be right. But I tend to think that a stutterer would still stutter. Generally speaking, stuttering is a communication problem, not a speech problem. Along with the majority of stutterers, I do not stutter when speaking alone. As soon as I have to communicate to somebody, I stutter. Even singing: if I sing in a choir, or if I sing karaoke, I don't stutter. But I'm sure I would stutter if I sing a message to somebody.
So, my gut tells me that we would still stutter if speech were replaced by radiotelepathy.

Tom Weidig said...

>> Along with the majority of stutterers, I do not stutter when speaking alone. As soon as I have to communicate to somebody, I stutter. Even singing: if I sing in a choir, or if I sing karaoke, I don't stutter. But I'm sure I would stutter if I sing a message to somebody.

Yes, but you need to understand that VERY DIFFERENT brain regions are involved when you sing as opposed to when you talk.

Think of our brain as an old radio that sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't.