Keynote speaker Juho Joutsa

About the speaker

Juho Joutsa, MD, PhD is professor of neurology at University of Turku and chief neurologist at Turku University Hospital, Finland. He completed his postdoctoral training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and currently leads a 30-person research lab (Brain Stimulation and Neuroimaging laboratory, TurkuBrainlab). Prof. Joutsa is reknowned for his pioneering research leveraging brain lesions and neuroimaging to understand the neurobiological mechanisms of brain disorders. He has received multiple recognitions and awards for his research work, including being named among the 100 most influential people in medicine in Finland and receiving a Young Investigator Award given biannually to only one scientist across all fields of medicine in Finland.

Presentation topic:
What causes stuttering? A scientific breakthrough from studying brain lesions. 

Stuttering was initially considered a psychological issue, but accumulating evidence has proven this view wrong and stuttering is currently understood as a neurological disorder. However, despite decades of research, the neurobiological mechanisms of stuttering have remained enigmatic. Although the brain circuits involved in speech production are well known, a simple damage in these circuits fails to explain many of the clinical characteristics of stuttering, such as variability of speech fluency and strong emotional component affecting speech. Brain imaging studies in stuttering have shown multiple changes in brain function, but it is not clear which of these changes actually cause stuttering. A new line of research, pioneered by Joutsa and his colleagues, investigated cases where a focal brain damage (i.e. a brain lesion) had caused stuttering and managed to localize the brain circuits causally linked with stuttering.  This groundbreaking discovery may pave way towards new treatments.