Adaptation of Melodic Intonation Therapy to Spanish

Inclusion criteria

Patients diagnosed with nonfluent aphasia due to unilateral stroke in the left hemisphere without neuroimaging evidence of lesions in the right hemisphere who fulfilled the following criteria:

• The time elapsed since the stroke exceeded 6 months.
• Patient had received a standard program of conventional speech therapy after stroke.
• Persistent nonfluent aphasia with the following characteristics:

• Severely restricted language, which might be limited to meaningless stereotypy; unlike that observed in verbal tasks, the patient might produce some real and relevant words when singing familiar songs.
• Poor repetition, even for single words.
• Moderately preserved language comprehension.
• The nonstereotyped language was produced with a slurring of speech.
• The total score for the repetition did not exceed the 70th percentile in the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination. The score was obtained from the average score in three areas: repetition of words and repetition of phrases; listening comprehension exceeding the 15th percentile of Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination; and from the average score obtained in three areas: word comprehension, commands and complex ideational material.
• The patient was motivated, emotionally stable and had good attention.
• Signed informed consent was provided.

Exclusion criteria

• patients with a history of a previous stroke other than the index event or with any clinical condition (e.g., short life expectancy, coexisting disease) or other characteristics that precluded appropriate follow-up in the study
• patients participating in any therapeutic intervention clinical trials evaluating poststroke recovery
• use of psychotropic drugs that interfere with patient evaluation.