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. 2015 Sep 24:9:520.
doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00520. eCollection 2015.

Rehabilitation of aphasia: application of melodic-rhythmic therapy to Italian language

Maria Daniela Cortese  1 , Francesco Riganello  1 , Francesco Arcuri  1 , Luigina Maria Pignataro  1 , Iolanda Buglione  2
Affiliations

Rehabilitation of aphasia: application of melodic-rhythmic therapy to Italian language

Maria Daniela Cortese et al. Front Hum Neurosci. .

Abstract

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.

Keywords: aphasia; broca; melodic intonation therapy; melodic rhythmic therapy; music therapy.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
French and Italian interrogative vs. declarative sentences. (A) and (C) interrogative sentences in Italian and French Language respectively; (B) and (D) declarative sentences in Italian and French Language respectively.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Example of the melodic-rhythmic structure of an Italian sentence of common use (“how are you? I am fine”) and its visual scheme used in MRT (B).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Score of the spontaneous speech in baseline, end of the protocol and follow-up. Green line: mean of the scores; red lines: standard deviation; black dashed line: raw data.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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