Stimulating Music: Combining Melodic Intonation Therapy with Transcranial DC Stimulation to Facilitate Speech Recovery after Stroke

Abstract

It may be strange to think that singing could help a stroke victim speakagain, but this is the goal of Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT), aspeech therapy that emphasizes musical aspects of language. The positiveeffects of MIT on speech recovery may be mediated by a frontotemporalbrain network in the right hemisphere. We investigated the potential fora non-invasive brain stimulation technique, Transcranial Direct CurrentStimulation (tDCS), to augment the benefits of MIT for patients withsevere non-fluent aphasias. The tDCS was applied to the posteriorinferior frontal gyrus (IFG) of the right hemisphere, under theassumption that the posterior IFG is a key region in the process ofrecovering from aphasia. The stimulation coincided with an MIT session,conducted by a trained therapist. Participants' language fluencyimproved significantly more with real tDCS + MIT, compared to sham tDCS+ MIT. These results provide evidence that combining tDCS with MIT mayenhance activity in a sensorimotor network for articulation in the righthemisphere, to compensate for damaged left-hemisphere language centers.