Today we will look at more open-access articles. Several have come out in the past few months and are freely available on pubmed!

1.
Zumbansen A, Peretz I, & Hébert S. (2014) Published an article on Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) where they investigated the use of pitch and rhythm, rhythm alone, or traditional speech therapy for three individuals with Broca’s Aphasia. Participants underwent the treatments in three one-hour sessions a week for six weeks in a crossover design. Results indicated that improvements occurred in all three conditions; however, rhythm and pitch together showed greatest generalization. This finding contradicts fundings by Stahl et al. (2011), where the authors suggest that rhythm was the most important element for speech rehabilitation. One thing to consider in these studies is the small populations – with just three in the Zumbansen and 17 in the Stahl study.

Zumbansen A, Peretz I, & Hébert S. (2014). The Combination of Rhythm and Pitch Can Account for the Beneficial Effect of Melodic Intonation Therapy on Connected Speech Improvements in Broca’s Aphasia. Front Hum Neurosci., 8:592. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00592. PMID: 25157222

Stahl B1, Kotz SA, Henseler I, Turner R, Geyer S. (2011). Rhythm in disguise: why singing may not hold the key to recovery from aphasia. Brain. 134(Pt 10):3083-93. doi: 10.1093/brain/awr240. PMID: 21948939

2. A topic that seems to be getting more press as of late is the use of music with individuals with disorder of consciousness (DOC). A new review paper by Rollnik and Alternmuller (2014) addresses the use of music therapy with individuals in minimal conscious states or with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome. The paper talks about the lack of evidence for music listening in order to create an enriched environment. The author discuss the potential benefits of music and need for research.

Rollnik JD, & Altenmüller E. (2014). Music in disorders of consciousness.Front Neurosci., 3;8:190. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2014.00190 PMID: 25071434 

3. Aluru et al. (2014) conducted a study to learn the impact of different auditory cueing conditions on wrist extension in individuals who in different stages of post-stroke recovery. Findings indicated that the auditory curing resulted in different activation patterns dependent on stage of recovery. The authors suggested that this was due to the recruitment of distinct neural substraits. This article is the first I have seen that looks at the differential effects of auditory rhythmic cues based on stage of recovery. finding that there were different effects has implications for the use of rhythmic cueing in rehabilitation therapy.

Aluru V, Lu Y, Leung A, Verghese J, & Raghavan P. (2014). Effect of auditory constraints on motor performance depends on stage of recovery post-stroke. Front Neurol. 2014 Jun 23;5:106. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2014.00106. PMID:25002859