Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science, 2018, 8, 415-429 http://www.scirp.org/journal/jbbs ISSN Online: 2160-5874 ISSN Print: 2160-5866 Impact of Motor Speech Intervention on Neural Activity in Children with Speech Sound Disorders: Use of Magnetoencephalography Vickie Y. Yu 1 , Darren S. Kadis 2 , Debra Goshulak 3 , Aravind K. Namasivayam 4 , Margit Pukonen 3 , Robert M. Kroll 3,4 , Luc F. De Nil 4 , Elizabeth W. Pang 5,6* 1 Department of Communication Disorders and Sciences, California State University Northridge, California, USA 2 Division of Neurology and Pediatric Neuroimaging Research Consortium, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, USA 3 The Speech & Stuttering Institute, Toronto, Canada 4 Department of Speech-Language Pathology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada 5 Neurosciences and Mental Health, Sick Kids Research Institute, Toronto, Canada 6 Division of Neurology, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada Abstract We present the novel use of a neuroimaging technique, magnetoencephalo- graphy (MEG), for examining therapy-related changes in neural activity dur- ing a speech and a non-speech motor task in children with speech sound dis- orders (SSD). Nine children (mean age = 4.2 years) with SSD were scanned in the MEG before and after an eight-week course of intensive motor speech therapy. MEG tasks involved an oromotor and a syllable production task. MEG analyses identified significant post-therapy changes in brain regions re- lated to oromotor control and speech production. Behavioral assessments showed significant improvements on measures of motor speech skills and ar- ticulation following intervention. This is the first demonstration of the ability of MEG to: 1) capture brain activations resulting from oromotor movements and simple syllable production in young children, and 2) capture brain changes related to speech therapy. As the findings from this study are prom- ising, we discuss directions for the design of future studies to further examine specific neural dysfunctions in speech sound disorders. Keywords Speech Sound Disorders, Children, Intervention, Neuroimaging, Speech Production How to cite this paper: Yu, V.Y., Kadis, D.S., Goshulak, D., Namasivayam, A.K., Pukonen, M., Kroll, R.M., De Nil, L.F. and Pang, E.W. (2018) Paper Title. Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science, 8, 415-429. https://doi.org/10.4236/jbbs.2018.87026 Received: May 25, 2018 Accepted: July 2, 2018 Published: July 5, 2018 Copyright © 2018 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Open Access DOI: 10.4236/jbbs.2018.87026 Jul. 5, 2018 415 Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science