Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268

Evidence-based guidelines on the therapeutic use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)

We know from animal studies that a stimulating and enriched environment can enhance recovery after stroke, but little is known about the effects of an enriched sound environment on recovery from neural damage in humans. In humans, music listening activates a wide-spread bilateral network of brain regions related to attention, semantic processing, memory, motor functions, and emotional processing. Music exposure also enhances emotional and cognitive functioning in healthy subjects and in various clinical patient groups. The potential role of music in neurological rehabilitation, however, has not been systematically investigated. This single-blind, randomized, and controlled trial was designed to determine whether everyday music listening can facilitate the recovery of cognitive functions and mood after stroke. In the acute recovery phase, 60 patients with a left or right hemisphere middle cerebral artery (MCA) stroke were randomly assigned to a music group, a language group, or a control group. During the following two months, the music and language groups listened daily to self-selected music or audio books, respectively, while the control group received no listening material. In addition, all patients received standard medical care and rehabilitation. All patients underwent an extensive neuropsychological assessment, which included a wide range of cognitive tests as well as mood and quality of life questionnaires, one week (baseline), 3 months, and 6 months after the stroke. Fifty-four patients completed the study. Results showed that recovery in the domains of verbal memory and focused attention improved significantly more in the music group than in the language and control groups. The music group also experienced less depressed and confused mood than the control group. These findings demonstrate for the first time that music listening during the early post-stroke stage can enhance cognitive recovery and prevent negative mood. The neural mechanisms potentially underlying these effects are discussed.

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Music listening enhances cognitive recovery and mood after middle cerebral artery stroke

http://www.bu.edu/naeser/aphasia/papers/Naeser_et_al_2005_BL.pdf

Improved picture naming in chronic aphasia after TMS to part of right Broca's area: an open-protocol study.

Functional neuroimaging methods have reached maturity. It is now possible to start to build the foundations of a physiology of language. The remarkable number of neuroimaging studies performed so f...

https://www.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/physrev.00049.2003

Renewal of the Neurophysiology of Language: Functional Neuroimaging

We examined mechanisms of recovery from aphasia in seven nonfluent aphasic patients, who were successfully treated with melodic intonation therapy (MIT) after a lengthy absence of spontaneous recovery.We measured changes in relative cerebral blood flow (CBF) with positron emission tomography (PET) during hearing and repetition of simple words, and during repetition of MIT-loaded words. Without MIT, language tasks abnormally activated right hemisphere regions, homotopic to those activated in the normal subject, and deactivated left hemisphere language zones. In contrast, repeating words with MIT reactivated Broca9s area and the left prefrontal cortex, while deactivating the counterpart of Wernicke9s area in the right hemisphere. The recovery process induced by MIT in these patients probably coincides with this reactivation of left prefrontal structures. In contrast, the right hemisphere regions abnormally activated during simple language tasks seem to be associated with the initial persistence of the aphasia. This study supports the idea that abnormal activation patterns in the lesioned brain are not necessarily related to the recovery process. NEUROLOGY 1996;47: 1504-1511

C. Francois

Papers

Recovery from nonfluent aphasia after melodic intonation therapy A PET study