ArticleBrain : a journal of neurology2011
Rhythm in disguise: why singing may not hold the key to recovery from aphasia.
Article in Brain : a journal of neurology, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT05738499 (The Effectiveness and Mechanism of Character Strengths-based Structured Treatment and Education Programme on Rehabilitation of Stroke Patients), which is not on this map. Cited by 47 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
The Effectiveness and Mechanism of Character Strengths-based Structured Treatment and Education Programme on Rehabilitation of Stroke Patients
Who cites it
47 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 152 citations in OpenAlex.
- Melodic Intonation Therapy for aphasia: A multi-level meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials and individual participant data.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2022Pooled it
- Music interventions for acquired brain injury.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2017Pooled it
- ORLA combined with telerehabilitation in patients with subacute Poststroke aphasia: a randomized controlled trial.Scientific reports · 2025Trial
- Singing can facilitate foreign language learning.Memory & cognition · 2014Trial
- A targeted review of prosodic production in agrammatic aphasia.Neuropsychological rehabilitation · 2025Review
- Neural Correlates of Rhythm in Post-Stroke Aphasia.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- The Effect of Prosodic Timing Structure on Unison Production in People With Aphasia.American journal of speech-language pathology · 2024Article
- Music Rhythmic Cueing for the Production of Non-native Speech Rhythm: Evidence from Chinese Learners of French.Journal of psycholinguistic research · 2024Article
- Is There a Role of Inferior Frontal Cortex in Motor Timing? A Study of Paced Finger Tapping in Patients with Non-Fluent Aphasia.NeuroSci · 2023Article
- Examining cortical tracking of the speech envelope in post-stroke aphasia.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023Article
- Effects of melodic intonation therapy in patients with chronic nonfluent aphasia.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2023Article
- A Review on Music Interventions for Frontotemporal Aphasia and a Proposal for Alternative Treatments.Biomedicines · 2022Review
- The relationship between entrainment dynamics and reading fluency assessed by sensorimotor perturbation.Experimental brain research · 2022Article
- Musicality in human vocal communication: an evolutionary perspective.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- In Time with the Beat: Entrainment in Patients with Phonological Impairment, Apraxia of Speech, and Parkinson's Disease.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- Processing rhythm in speech and music: Shared mechanisms and implications for developmental speech and language disorders.Neuropsychology · 2021Review
- Auditory beat perception is related to speech output fluency in post-stroke aphasia.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Adaptation of Melodic Intonation Therapy to Greek: A Clinical Study in Broca's Aphasia With Brain Perfusion SPECT Validation.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2021Article
- Musical Training for Auditory Rehabilitation in Hearing Loss.Journal of clinical medicine · 2020Article
- Formulaic Language Resources May Help Overcome Difficulties in Speech-Motor Planning after Stroke.PloS one · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The question of whether singing may be helpful for stroke patients with non-fluent aphasia has been debated for many years. However, the role of rhythm in speech recovery appears to have been neglected. In the current lesion study, we aimed to assess the relative importance of melody and rhythm for speech production in 17 non-fluent aphasics. Furthermore, we systematically alternated the lyrics to test for the influence of long-term memory and preserved motor automaticity in formulaic expressions. We controlled for vocal frequency variability, pitch accuracy, rhythmicity, syllable duration, phonetic complexity and other relevant factors, such as learning effects or the acoustic setting. Contrary to some opinion, our data suggest that singing may not be decisive for speech production in non-fluent aphasics. Instead, our results indicate that rhythm may be crucial, particularly for patients with lesions including the basal ganglia. Among the patients we studied, basal ganglia lesions accounted for more than 50% of the variance related to rhythmicity. Our findings therefore suggest that benefits typically attributed to melodic intoning in the past could actually have their roots in rhythm. Moreover, our data indicate that lyric production in non-fluent aphasics may be strongly mediated by long-term memory and motor automaticity, irrespective of whether lyrics are sung or spoken.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.