Research has suggested that a fronto-temporal network in the right hemisphere may be responsible for mediating melodic intonation therapy's (MIT) positive effects on speech recovery. We investigated the potential for a non-invasive brain stimulation technique, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), to augment the benefits of MIT in patients with non-fluent aphasia by modulating neural activity in the brain during treatment with MIT. The polarity of the current applied to the scalp determines the effects of tDCS on the underlying tissue: anodal-tDCS increases excitability, whereas cathodal tDCS decreases excitability. We applied anodal-tDCS to the posterior inferior frontal gyrus of the right hemisphere, an area that has been shown both to contribute to singing through the mapping of sounds to articulatory actions and to serve as a key region in the process of recovery from aphasia, particularly in patients with large left hemisphere lesions. The stimulation was applied while patients were treated with MIT by a trained therapist. Six patients with moderate to severe non-fluent aphasia underwent three consecutive days of anodal-tDCS + MIT, and an equivalent series of sham-tDCS + MIT. The two treatment series were separated by 1 week, and the order in which the treatments were administered was randomized. Compared to the effects of sham-tDCS + MIT, anodal-tDCS + MIT led to significant improvements in fluency of speech. These results support the hypothesis that, as the brain seeks to reorganize and compensate for damage to left hemisphere language centers, combining anodal-tDCS with MIT may further recovery from post-stroke aphasia by enhancing activity in a right hemisphere sensorimotor network for articulation.

Aphasia is a complex disorder, frequent after stroke (with an incidence of 38%), with a detailed pathophysiological characterization. Effective approaches are crucial for devising an efficient rehabilitative strategy, in order to address the everyday life and professional disability. Several rehabilitative procedures are based on psycholinguistic, cognitive, psychosocial or pragmatic approaches, including amongst those with a neurobehavioral approach the Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT). Van Eeckhout's adaptation of MIT to French language (Melodic-Rhythmic Therapy: MRT) has implemented the training strategy by adding a rhythmic structure reproducing French prosody. The purpose of this study was to adapt MRT rehabilitation procedures to Italian language and to verify its efficacy in a group of six chronic patients (five males) with severe non-fluent aphasia and without specific aphasic treatments during the previous 9 months. The patients were treated 4 days a week for 16 weeks, with sessions of 30-40 min. They were assessed 6 months after the end of the treatment (follow-up). The patients showed a significant improvement at the Aachener Aphasie Test (AAT) in different fields of spontaneous speech, with superimposable results at the follow-up. Albeit preliminary, these findings support the use of MRT in the rehabilitation after stroke. Specifically, MRT seems to benefit from its stronger structure than the available stimulation-facilitation procedures and allows a better quantification of the rehabilitation efficacy.

Melodic intonation therapy (MIT) is a structured protocol for language rehabilitation in people with Broca's aphasia. The main particularity of MIT is the use of intoned speech, a technique in which the clinician stylizes the prosody of short sentences using simple pitch and rhythm patterns. In the original MIT protocol, patients must repeat diverse sentences in order to espouse this way of speaking, with the goal of improving their natural, connected speech. MIT has long been regarded as a promising treatment but its mechanisms are still debated. Recent work showed that rhythm plays a key role in variations of MIT, leading to consider the use of pitch as relatively unnecessary in MIT. Our study primarily aimed to assess the relative contribution of rhythm and pitch in MIT's generalization effect to non-trained stimuli and to connected speech. We compared a melodic therapy (with pitch and rhythm) to a rhythmic therapy (with rhythm only) and to a normally spoken therapy (without melodic elements). Three participants with chronic post-stroke Broca's aphasia underwent the treatments in hourly sessions, 3 days per week for 6 weeks, in a cross-over design. The informativeness of connected speech, speech accuracy of trained and non-trained sentences, motor-speech agility, and mood was assessed before and after the treatments. The results show that the three treatments improved speech accuracy in trained sentences, but that the combination of rhythm and pitch elicited the strongest generalization effect both to non-trained stimuli and connected speech. No significant change was measured in motor-speech agility or mood measures with either treatment. The results emphasize the beneficial effect of both rhythm and pitch in the efficacy of original MIT on connected speech, an outcome of primary clinical importance in aphasia therapy.

OBJECTIVE:Positive results have been reported with melodic intonation therapy (MIT) in nonfluent aphasia patients with damage to their left-brain speech processes, using the patient's intact ability to sing to promote functional language. This pilot study sought to determine the immediate effects of introducing modified melodic intonation therapy (MMIT), a modification of MIT, as an early intervention in stroke patients presenting with Broca's aphasia.

METHOD:After a randomized controlled single-blind design, 30 acute stroke survivors with nonfluent aphasia were randomly assigned to receive MIT treatment or no treatment. A pre/post test, based on the responsive and repetition subsections of the Western Aphasia Battery, was developed for this study.

RESULTS:After 1 session, a significant within-subject change was observed for the treatment group's adjusted total score ( p = .02), and a significant difference between groups was found for adjusted total score ( p = .02) favoring the treatment group. The treatment group also showed a significant change in their responsive subsection scores ( p = .01) when their pre-tests from Visit 1 to Visit 2 were compared, whereas the control group showed no change, suggesting a possible carry-over effect of MIT treatment.

CONCLUSION:This study provides preliminary data supporting the possible benefits of utilizing MMIT treatment early in the recovery of nonfluent aphasia patients.

Background. Little is known about the efficacy of language production treatment in subacute severe nonfluent aphasia. Although Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) is a language production treatment for this disorder, until now MIT effect studies have focused on chronic aphasia. Purpose. This study examines whether language production treatment with MIT is effective in subacute severe nonfluent aphasia. Methods. A multicenter, randomized controlled trial was conducted in a waiting-list control design: patients were randomly allocated to the experimental group (MIT) or the control group (control intervention followed by delayed MIT). In both groups, therapy started at 2 to 3 months poststroke and was given intensively (5 h/wk) during 6 weeks. In a second therapy period, the control group received 6 weeks of intensive MIT. The experimental group resumed their regular treatment. Assessment was done at baseline (T1), after the first intervention period (T2), and after the second intervention period (T3). Efficacy was evaluated at T2. The impact of delaying MIT on therapy outcome was also examined. Results. A total of 27 participants were included: n = 16 in the experimental group and n = 11 in the control group. A significant effect in favor of MIT on language repetition was observed for trained items, with mixed results for untrained items. After MIT there was a significant improvement in verbal communication but not after the control intervention. Finally, delaying MIT was related to less improvement in the repetition of trained material. Conclusions. In these patients with subacute severe nonfluent aphasia, language production treatment with MIT was effective. Earlier treatment may lead to greater improvement.

OBJECTIVE:To investigate the therapeutic effect of neurologic music therapy (NMT) and speech language therapy (SLT) through improvement of the aphasia quotient (AQ) in post-stroke aphasic patients.

METHODS:Twenty-one post-stroke, nonfluent aphasia patients who had ischemic/hemorrhagic stroke on radiologic evaluation were divided into the NMT and SLT groups. They received NMT and SLT for 1 month. Language function was assessed by Korean version-Western Aphasia Battery before and after therapy. NMT consisted of therapeutic singing and melodic intonation therapy, and SLT consisted of language-oriented therapy.

RESULTS:Significant improvements were revealed in AQ, repetition, and naming after therapy in the NMT group and improvements in repetition in the SLT group of chronic stroke patients (p<0.05). There were significant improvements in language ability in the NMT group of subacute stroke patients. However, there was no significant improvement in the SLT group of subacute stroke patients.

CONCLUSION:We concluded that the two therapies are effective treatments in the chronic stage of stroke and NMT is effective in subacute post-stroke aphasic patients.