This is Scientific Americans' 60-Second Science.

I'm Karen Hopkins.

When you stop to think about it, it's not all that easy to speak.

First, you have to think of something to say.

Then, your brain has to tell your mouth to say it.

Interruptions anywhere along this articulation pathway can impair the utterance and create

something like a stutter.

Now, studying a neuro-computational model of this complex process, researchers have found

that stuttering stems from a glitch in the neural circuit that initiates speech.

They presented their findings at the meeting of the acoustical society of America.

My main research interest is understanding how the brain translates thoughts.

Frank Gunther, of Boston University.

Into movements of the tongue and the other speech articulators to convey these thoughts to

another person.

He says that stuttering is very common, and it happens in all languages.

It's estimated that about 1% of the world's population – stutters.

Despite this, and despite being studied at least as far back as the ancient Romans – are

understanding of what causes stuttering as until recent years been very poor.

Numerous neural circuits come into play when it comes to generating speech.

But the key drivers can be broken down into two main circuits.

One is an initiation circuit, and the other is an articulation circuit.

To understand the function of these circuits, it's useful to consider something like the

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