This investigation extended findings from Sarkamo et al. (2008, 2010, 2014) and examined the evidence on emotion, music, and language to determine the most effective and efficient method for application to the rehabilitation of participants with aphasia secondary to left middle cerebral artery stroke. A single subject adapted alternating treatment design was used to compare two music conditions, using music with sung lyrics simultaneously with silent reading of the lyrics, and priming with music and sung lyrics followed by reading of the lyrics, with a control condition using reading lyrics without music. Findings, presented for a single participant, demonstrated that the simultaneous and priming conditions were equally effective and efficient. The two music conditions resulted in retention of the trained phrases four weeks later, but the control condition did not. Using the celebration trend split middle line method, findings were significant and resulted in improvement on six out of ten reading subtest outcome measures. The impact of this study was a behavioral demonstration of effectiveness and efficiency of therapy using music directed toward recovery of reading comprehension for this participant with aphasia. Retention of trained reading material was improved using this approach. Outcome measurements showed improvement generalized to untrained reading material. New materials were developed to increase options for treatment.
Keywords: aphasia, emotion, language, music, neuroplasticity, reading, stroke
