Stroke singing enabled language center

Stroke: singing activates again Language center American researchers led by the neurologist Gottfried Schlaug have obviously discovered a very effective therapy in the form of singing in stroke patients.

Researchers led by the neurologist Gottfried Schlaug have obviously discovered a very effective therapy in the form of singing in stroke patients. Gottfried Schlaug, director of the „Music and Neuroimaging Laboratory“ at Harvard Medical School, presented its findings on Saturday, February 20, 2010 at the Annual Meeting of the US Researchers' Association „American Academy of the Advancement of Science“ (AAAS) in San Diego. Among other things, he showed video recordings in which patients with speech disorders (aphasia) can barely speak a text but can sing the same text.

Schlaug, who is also a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, explained the phenomenon so that the music addressed both halves of the brain. The act of speech is restricted to the left half, in which lies the language center, which was not adequately supplied with the patient by the stroke with blood and thereby damaged. With the music and the response of larger parts of the brain, it has been made clear with imaging techniques that affected brain centers are developing new connections.

Schlaug and colleagues call the therapy „Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT)“ and have already tested them in their first studies. As early as February 2008, researchers from Teppo Särkämö, University of Helsinki, found that stroke patients regenerated better and faster when they listened to music for between one and two hours a day, directly after the cerebral infarction.

It is now to be hoped that the expansion of this extremely cost-effective and inexpensive method of treatment will be expanded in the future. (Thorsten Fischer, Naturopath Osteopathy, 22.02.2010)

Additional information:

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