Browsing by Author "Oksanen, Emma"

Background. Aphasia is a language disorder caused by brain damage that occurs in up to 40% of stroke survivors. People with aphasia (PWA) often experience abnormalities in learning, short-term memory, and auditory processing, which are interconnected with their language processing deficits. Rehabilitation can induce changes in the auditory processing of PWA, and those changes can be linked also to language recovery. Singing abilities can be preserved in aphasia, which enables enjoyable and sociable therapy models for aphasia. This electroencephalography (EEG) study set out to explore the effects of multimodal choir-singing intervention on the implicit auditory processing capacities of PWA, reflected by the mismatch negativity (MMN), and whether the effect is correlated with changes in communicational abilities and verbal learning. Methods. 34 PWA took part in a 16-week intervention, which comprised of choir singing, melodic intonation therapy and home training. Participants trained one of two novel songs during the intervention. Before and after the intervention, the participants’ brain responses were recorded with EEG, while they listened to modulated versions of the two novel songs, one of which was rehearsed during the intervention. In this passive oddball-design, the songs contained deviations in pitch and phonemes. Communicational abilities and verbal learning were also assessed before and after the intervention. Linear mixed models were used to analyze the change that occurred during the intervention in the MMN response for both trained and untrained songs. Those changes were correlated with changes in communication and learning. Results and conclusions. The intervention had a statistically significant effect on the MMN to phoneme deviations in the trained and untrained songs in the left frontotemporal area. The amplitude of the MMN to phoneme deviations in the trained song decreased, while the amplitude of the MMN to phoneme deviations in the untrained song increased. Furthermore, the attenuation of the MMN to the trained song was correlated with improvement in language performance. These results imply that singing intervention can affect implicit auditory processes in PWA, and that changes in those processes can be accompanied by improved communication abilities.