Abstract
BackgroundMelodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) uses the melodic elements of speech to improve language production in severe nonfluent aphasia. A crucial element of MIT is the melodically intoned auditory input: the patient listens to the therapist singing a target utterance. Such input of melodically intoned language facilitates production, whereas auditory input of spoken language does not.MethodsUsing a sparse sampling fMRI sequence, we examined the differential auditory processing of spoken and melodically intoned language. Nineteen right-handed healthy volunteers performed an auditory lexical decision task in an event related design consisting of spoken and melodically intoned meaningful and meaningless items. The control conditions consisted of neutral utterances, either melodically intoned or spoken.ResultsIrrespective of whether the items were normally spoken or melodically intoned, meaningful items showed greater activation in the supramarginal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule, predominantly in the left hemisphere. Melodically intoned language activated both temporal lobes rather symmetrically, as well as the right frontal lobe cortices, indicating that these regions are engaged in the acoustic complexity of melodically intoned stimuli. Compared to spoken language, melodically intoned language activated sensory motor regions and articulatory language networks in the left hemisphere, but only when meaningful language was used.DiscussionOur results suggest that the facilitatory effect of MIT may – in part – depend on an auditory input which combines melody and meaning.ConclusionCombined melody and meaning provide a sound basis for the further investigation of melodic language processing in aphasic patients, and eventually the neurophysiological processes underlying MIT.
Highlights
Aphasia is a severe language disorder that affects language comprehension and production at different degrees, compromising both spoken and written modalities
Encouraging the aphasic patients to use melody during their speech production may target areas in the undamaged right hemisphere, but the question remains what the role is of the melodically intoned auditory input, that is offered intensively during Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) and that probably plays a crucial role in the initial facilitation of language production
For the meaningful items compared to meaningless items increased activation was seen left-lateralized in the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL)
Summary
Aphasia is a severe language disorder that affects language comprehension and production at different degrees, compromising both spoken and written modalities. Encouraging the aphasic patients to use melody during their speech production may target areas in the undamaged right hemisphere, but the question remains what the role is of the melodically intoned auditory input, that is offered intensively during MIT and that probably plays a crucial role in the initial facilitation of language production. From this point of view, that is, reception instead of production, Meyer et al (2002) investigated the perceptual differences in processing spoken normal sentences, spoken delexicalized sentences, and prosodic speech (speech utterance reduced to speech melody). A sparse temporal sampling design was employed for acquisition of the functional imaging data to ensure that scanner noise would not interfere with the auditory stimuli, being maximally sensitive to differences between the different types of language stimuli
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