Recovery of Fluent Speech Through a Musician’s Use of Prelearned Song Repertoire: A Case Study

Abstract

Research in music and language has pointed to the many shared neural pathways in singing and speech (Patel 2003a, 2003b, 2003c; Schlaug, 2008); however, the use of prelearned songs as a tool to aid in the recovery of speech following stroke is not fully understood. Additionally, the differences in treatment of musicians versus non-musicians after brain injury need further investi- gation due to the potential differences in underlying neural networks (Gaser & Schlaug, 2003). A case study of a musicologist who lost his speech following a stroke and gradually recovered it through the systematic use of songs from his anthology of folk songs is presented in the context of contemporary neuroscience research in music language and the brain.