Does your doctor and hospital have enough brain cells to implement this easy and cheap intervention? Or do they incompetently not even know about it?
Listening to singing helps stroke victims regain speech, study finds
The beneficial effect of listening to singing is greater than that of music alone or speech alone, researchers in Finland found.
Listening to singing appears to help the brain rebuild the networks necessary for speech after a stroke, Finnish researchers have found.
The beneficial effect of listening to singing is greater than that of music alone or speech alone (in the form of audiobooks), say researchers at the University of Helsinki and Turku University Hospital in the medical journal eNeuro.
Using sophisticated resonance techniques, Finnish researchers have demonstrated that “the group exposed to vocal music recovers function better (…) and there are more connections forming in the centres of the brain that participate in language,” Stapf said. “These structures connect better in the group exposed to vocal music.”
Study participants were able to choose the musical style they liked the most. No mention is made of the language used, but it would be logical to conclude that the greatest benefits are generated by singing in a language the patient can understand.
Singing can be of great benefit to stroke victims, confirmed Cheryl Jones, one of Canada’s leading experts in music therapy, but it all depends on which region of the brain has been affected.
Singing, she says, activates the right hemisphere of the brain, while language is usually controlled by the left hemisphere.
“We recruit another member of the team to recover the language,” she said. “The right hemisphere comes to help the areas of the left hemisphere that have been injured and that no longer can do it on their own. ”
Aphasia and speech disorders are common after stroke, Stapf said.
Language, he explains, is a complex function. It is not enough to speak: it is also necessary to understand the meaning of words, to generate words to produce content that is logical, to generate not only sounds, but also the meaning that accompanies them.
“Language is a very complex system in the brain,” said Stapf, who is a musician in his spare time. There are several entrances, visual, auditory, and there are several exits.”
When faced with a patient with aphasia, he adds, it can be very difficult to unlock one of these front doors. How can you talk about language with someone who has lost it? How can we understand words when we have lost notion and understanding?
We must then find the right input channel, and “with the language sung, we sometimes manage to unblock a situation that is very disrupted.”
“We have always had, in the past, the observation that sometimes, when pure words do not enter, the words carried by the music sometimes enter, and we manage to make aphasic patients sing who have difficulty speaking,” he said.
The basis of stroke recovery is brain plasticity, the brain’s ability to reorganize itself and resume functioning more or less normally.
In the Finnish experiment, when comparing groups that had been exposed to singing, music and audiobooks, it was the patients of the first group who developed better language function.
“It means that words plus a vector, which is music, seem to have more of an impact on function,” Stapf said. “This means that neurons that have survived (…) are trying both to rewrite the software that has been affected, but also to create new connections, new connections between them.”
During rehabilitation, words alone or music alone may have a favourable effect, but “apparently when we use music as a vector, as a second entry into the brain apart from the entry of pure words, the system seems more primed to stimulate oneself and be more motivated to create these connections ”.
The same phenomenon is observed with dancing, said Stapf, which is sometimes used to help a patient relearn to walk and move after a stroke. Here, too, the addition of music seems to be beneficial.
In music therapy, Jones points out, the patient will sometimes be asked to work on songs or nursery rhymes (often from childhood) whose words and rhythm are very familiar to them. This familiarity may in some way make it easier for the brain and help the patient to slowly relearn to speak.
The patient can also be taught to sing phrases that he needs in his daily life, such as “I’m hungry” or “I’m tired.”
“It takes a lot of work, but eventually they’ll be able to sing ‘I’m hungry,’ ” she said. “Then eventually, they will be able to say it by speaking. We can continue to hear the influence of music, but in fact, they will speak.”
At the moment, the exact mechanism by which singing causes the brain to reorganize more effectively to recover language after a stroke remains largely a mystery.
We know very well that music can arouse emotions. Is this the key to the whole affair? That words alone are not as effective as words carried by emotions? Does singing call on other areas of the brain that call for more of these new connections?
These are all questions pondered by Stapf, who does not hesitate to call this an “incredible discovery” that could open the door to a better understanding of what music does in our brain in this context.
All the more so, he points out, since “music has no side effects.”
“Music plus language seems to improve language. Music and movement seem to improve motor skills,” he concluded. Perhaps music could become a vector in several areas that facilitate neural plasticity and the brain’s ability to recover or even improve functions.
“Spoken music apparently becomes music that speaks to us and speaks to our brain and inspires it to find new connections. It is very beautiful as a principle. It is a remedy that is readily available at home for everyone.”
No comments:
Post a Comment