Protocol evaluation for effective music therapy for persons with nonfluent aphasia

Although the notion of the language specificity of neural correlates has been widely accepted in the past (e.g., lefthemispheric dominance including Broca's and Wernike's area, N400 ERP component of semantic processing, and the P600 ERP component of syntactic processing, etc.), recent studies have shown that music and language share some important neurological aspects in their processing, both involving bilateral hemispheric activities. In line with this are the frequent behavioral clinical observations that persons with aphasia show improved articulation and prosody of speech in musically assisted phrases. Connecting recent neurological findings with clinical observations would not only inform clinical practice but would enhance understanding of the neurological mechanisms involved in the processing of speech/language and music. This article presents a music therapy treatment protocol study of 7 nonfluent patients with aphasia. The data and findings are discussed with regard to some of the recent focuses and issues addressed in the experimental studies using cognitive-behavioral, electrophysiological, and brain-imaging techniques.