About 70 million people worldwide stutter when they speak, and it turns out humans aren\u2019t the only ones susceptible to verbal hiccups. Scientists at this year\u2019s Society for Neuroscience Conference in Chicago, Illinois, show that mice, too, can stumble in their vocalizations. In humans, stuttering has long been linked to a mutation in the \u201chousekeeping\u201d gene\u00a0Gnptab, which maintains basic levels of cellular function. To cement this curious genetic link, researchers decided to induce the\u00a0Gnptab\u00a0\u201cstutter mutation\u201d in mice. They suspected the change would trigger a mouse version of stammering. But deciphering stuttered squeaks is no easy task, so researchers set up a computerized model to register stutters through a statistical analysis of vocalizations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-1197773","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n