StuDyst - a medical research project

The causal mechanisms of stuttering and of the primary forms of the movement disorder dystonia are still a matter of debate. StuDyst is our project to combine and to rationalise the medical research into the causes of stuttering and dystonia.

There are many more people who stutter than people who suffer from the classical types of dystonia (e. g. cervical dystonia, spasmodic dysphonia and writer's cramp). Therefore the causal linking of these disorders may reveal stuttering to be the huge underwater part of the dystonia "iceberg” (abstracted in our project logo).

As you can read in our research principles we aim to apply a very rational approach to the defect research, which reflects our technical backgrounds. Stuttering ourselves, we aim to prioritise patient interests. 

We attempt to publish ideas and results in peer-reviewed medical journals. Details concerning submission or revision of such articles will be published as supplementary material on this website. 

Our starting point is the hypothesis that distorted sensory feedback from certain muscle spindles would be sufficient to cause, as compensations, stuttering and certain types of primary dystonia in completely normal central nervous processes. This hypothesis implies that existing central nervous abnormities can be interpreted as secondary compensations that affect the (normal) situational and task-specific variability of symptom severity. The basic article was published in 2012 [Schuster SH, Schuster FM. A muscle spindle abnormity in one laryngeal muscle would be sufficient to cause stuttering. Med Hypotheses 2012 Jul;79(1):34-7. Article Abstract in PubMed].

Representing personally only the stuttering side of this research field, we aim to cooperate with dystonia research foundations and patient organizations in our attempts to initiate the empirical verification of our hypotheses concerning dystonia.

We hope that you find our project interesting.

Steffen Schuster             Frank Schuster