Espousing melodic intonation therapy in aphasia rehabilitation: a case study.

A program of Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) was adapted as a home training procedure to enable a severely affected aphasic adult to respond to 52 simple questions bearing relevance to his daily life. MIT involves embedding short phrases or sentences in a simple, non-distinct melody pattern. As the patient progresses through the program, the melodic aspect is faded and the program eventually leads to production of the target phrase or sentence in normal speech prosody. The present procedure consisted of three levels of training designed to advance the subject from an initial level of intoning responses in a simple melody to producing the responses in normal speech prosody. The subject's wife was trained to administer MIT both in the clinical and home settings. Considerable improvement was obtained in imitation and in context related responses to questions. These findings lend support to the proposal that the music dominance to the right hemisphere assists, and perhaps diminishes the language dominance of, the damaged left hemisphere. The limitations of use of Melodic Intonation Therapy were discussed.