Noelle Renner, Marie R. Kerins, Ed.D.
The Effects of Previous Musical Training on Melodic Intonation Therapy
Research has supported the use of singing in treatment of patients with nonfluent aphasia, also known as Broca’s aphasia (Schlaug, Marchina, & Norton, 2008). Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) utilizes this singing technique to increase the patient’s utterances from 2-3 words to 5 words or more (Norton, Zipse, Marchina, & Schlaug, 2009). Though MIT has been supported as a preferred method for increasing fluency in those with aphasia, it remains unclear if the patient’s previous musical ability is a factor in the success of this technique. Additionally, amusia, or “tone-deafness,” is the disorder of perception and production of pitch (Loui, Wan, & Schlaug, 2010), and the problem is that the effect that this disorder has on the success of MIT has not been thoroughly investigated. So the question arises; do individuals with nonfluent aphasia who are formally trained in singing benefit more from MIT than those who are not musically inclined?