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.