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Effective music therapy techniques in the treatment of nonfluent aphasia
Author(s) -
Tomaino Concetta M.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2012.06451.x
Subject(s) - prosody , articulation (sociology) , aphasia , singing , psychology , music therapy , nonverbal communication , rhythm , cognitive psychology , speech recognition , audiology , computer science , communication , medicine , psychotherapist , acoustics , physics , politics , political science , law
In music therapy for nonfluent aphasia patients who have difficulty producing meaningful words, phrases, and sentences, various benefits of singing have been identified: strengthened breathing and vocal ability, improved articulation and prosody of speech, and increased verbal and nonverbal communicative behaviors. This paper will introduce these various techniques used in clinical music therapy, and summarize findings based on our recent study to illustrate the strength of different techniques emphasizing rhythm, pitch, memory, and vocal/oral motor components dealing with different symptoms. The efficacy of each component is enhanced or diminished by the choice of music and the way it is interactively delivered. This indicates that neural mechanisms underlying speech improvement vary greatly with available acoustic and social cues in aphasic brain.