A targeted review of prosodic production in agrammatic aphasia.

It is unclear whether individuals with agrammatic aphasia have particularly disrupted prosody, or in fact have relatively preserved prosody they can use in a compensatory way. A targeted literature review was undertaken to examine the evidence regarding the capacity of speakers with agrammatic aphasia to produce prosody. The aim was to answer the question, how much prosody can a speaker "do" with limited syntax? The literature was systematically searched for articles examining the production of grammatical prosody in people with agrammatism, and yielded 16 studies that were ultimately included in this review.

The Effect of Prosodic Timing Structure on Unison Production in People With Aphasia.

Purpose: Unison production is a common aphasia treatment technique in which the clinician and the person with aphasia (PWA) produce phrases aloud together. It can be implemented using a typical "conversational," syntax-influenced prosodic timing structure, or with a "metrical," beat-based timing structure, but to date no study has directly compared these two approaches. This study compared the effects of metrical versus conversational prosodic timing during unison production on the (a) accuracy of participants' spoken output and (b) timing alignment of participants' productions with the stimuli.

Get in Sync: Active Ingredients and Patient Profiles in Scripted-Sentence Learning in Spanish Speakers With Aphasia.

Purpose: Script training is a well-established treatment for aphasia, but its evidence comes almost exclusively from monolingual English speakers with aphasia. Furthermore, its active ingredients and profiles of people with aphasia (PWA) that respond to this treatment remain understudied. This study aimed to adapt a scripted-sentence learning protocol to Colombian Spanish speakers with aphasia, investigate speech entrainment (i.

Do caregiver proxy reports and congruence of client-proxy activity participation goals relate to quality of life in people with aphasia?

Background: Achieving activity participation goals is a key factor in quality of life (QOL) for people with aphasia (PWA), but expressing participation goals can be difficult for many of them. Proxy reports by caregivers may not accurately reflect the interests and participation goals of PWA, and discrepancies in these goals between PWA and their caregivers may affect QOL, based on the assumption that caregivers' awareness of their loved ones' unique participation goals may be important to increasing PWA activity participation.

Aims: To examine everyday activities valued by PWA using the Life Interests and Values (LIV) Cards; to measure congruence between PWA and their caregivers on life participation goals; and to measure how congruence of PWA-caregiver participation goals related to QOL.

Factors Affecting Voice Therapy Completion in Singers.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine (a) which factors may affect singers' completing voice therapy, and (b) develop predictive profiles to capture those singers at risk for dropping out of voice therapy.

Study Design: A case-control study was conducted comparing singers who completed voice therapy to singers who dropped out of voice therapy.

Methods: Six factors, including age, gender, diagnosis, length of time between laryngology referral and commencement of therapy, type of singer, and referral source were investigated in relation to voice therapy completion using the medical records of 409 singers in the Massachusetts General Hospital Voice Center database.

When right is all that is left: plasticity of right-hemisphere tracts in a young aphasic patient.

Using an adapted version of Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT), we treated an adolescent girl with a very large left-hemisphere lesion and severe nonfluent aphasia secondary to an ischemic stroke. At the time of her initial assessment 15 months after her stroke, she had reached a plateau in her recovery despite intense and long-term traditional speech-language therapy (approximately five times per week for more than one year). Following an intensive course of treatment with our adapted form of MIT, her performance improved on both trained and untrained phrases, as well as on speech and language tasks.

Auditory-motor mapping training as an intervention to facilitate speech output in non-verbal children with autism: a proof of concept study.

Although up to 25% of children with autism are non-verbal, there are very few interventions that can reliably produce significant improvements in speech output. Recently, a novel intervention called Auditory-Motor Mapping Training (AMMT) has been developed, which aims to promote speech production directly by training the association between sounds and articulatory actions using intonation and bimanual motor activities. AMMT capitalizes on the inherent musical strengths of children with autism, and offers activities that they intrinsically enjoy.

From singing to speaking: facilitating recovery from nonfluent aphasia.

It has been reported for more than 100 years that patients with severe nonfluent aphasia are better at singing lyrics than they are at speaking the same words. This observation led to the development of melodic intonation therapy (MIT). However, the efficacy of this therapy has yet to be substantiated in a randomized controlled trial.

A MEG investigation of single-word auditory comprehension in aphasia.

Purpose: To explore whether individuals with aphasia exhibit differences in the M350, an electrophysiological marker of lexical activation, compared with healthy controls.

Method: Seven people with aphasia, 9 age-matched controls, and 10 younger controls completed an auditory lexical decision task while cortical activity was recorded with magnetoencephalography. There were 2 stimulus conditions of interest: identity primed (i.

Impairment of speech production predicted by lesion load of the left arcuate fasciculus.

Background And Purpose: Previous studies have suggested that patients' potential for poststroke language recovery is related to lesion size; however, lesion location may also be of importance, particularly when fiber tracts that are critical to the sensorimotor mapping of sounds for articulation (eg, the arcuate fasciculus) have been damaged. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that lesion loads of the arcuate fasciculus (ie, volume of arcuate fasciculus that is affected by a patient's lesion) and of 2 other tracts involved in language processing (the extreme capsule and the uncinate fasciculus) are inversely related to the severity of speech production impairments in patients with stroke with aphasia.

Methods: Thirty patients with chronic stroke with residual impairments in speech production underwent high-resolution anatomic MRI and a battery of cognitive and language tests.

From music making to speaking: engaging the mirror neuron system in autism.

Individuals with autism show impairments in emotional tuning, social interactions and communication. These are functions that have been attributed to the putative human mirror neuron system (MNS), which contains neurons that respond to the actions of self and others. It has been proposed that a dysfunction of that system underlies some of the characteristics of autism.

Melodic intonation therapy: shared insights on how it is done and why it might help.

For more than 100 years, clinicians have noted that patients with nonfluent aphasia are capable of singing words that they cannot speak. Thus, the use of melody and rhythm has long been recommended for improving aphasic patients' fluency, but it was not until 1973 that a music-based treatment [Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT)] was developed. Our ongoing investigation of MIT's efficacy has provided valuable insight into this therapy's effect on language recovery.