Melodic Intonation Therapy for Aphasia: Appraisal of Systematic Reviews. Thank you!
Abstract/Description/Artist Statement
Melodic Intonation Therapy for Aphasia: Appraisal of Systematic Reviews Sarah Kazden, Shaunna Pentony, Natalia Rodriguez, Anastasia Raymer Background: Melodic intonation therapy (MIT) is an aphasia treatment approach that encourages use of right hemisphere prosody/musical capabilities to foster recovery in individuals with stroke-induced aphasia (Helm-Estabrooks & Albert, 1991). Specifically, MIT incorporates a treatment hierarchy to facilitate increased prosody and rhythmic hand tapping to improve verbal expression, presumably by engaging the right cerebral hemisphere. By 2012, a systematic review (SR) was published to summarize the growing MIT literature. Since that time more original studies and systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analyses (MAs) have been conducted to summarize the burgeoning MIT literature. Purpose: We conducted a critical appraisal of SRs and MAs to summarize the effects of MIT for stroke-induced aphasia. Methods: We examined the quality of 11 SRs/MAs that have summarized the findings of more than 65 original MIT studies. Using AMSTAR2 (Shea et al., 2017) we coded the methodological quality of the reviews and then summarized the review findings. Results: We found that the quality of the review papers has improved over time as research groups incorporated more rigorous methodologies. Early SRs were optimistic about the effects of MIT for all language measures. MAs since 2021 have presented a more cautious picture, reporting significant effects of MIT primarily for repetition tasks and some functional communication and naming measures. Discussion: While the effects of MIT are robust for improving repetition abilities, more caution is encouraged in expectations for improvements in functional communication. Overall, MIT may be considered an appropriate evidence-based intervention in clinical settings in adults with nonfluent aphasia. However, clinicians should be mindful of the limited scope and variability in the current evidence for MIT.
Faculty Advisor/Mentor
Stacie Raymer
Faculty Advisor/Mentor Email
sraymer@odu.edu
Faculty Advisor/Mentor Department
Speech Language Pathology
College/School Affiliation
Ellmer College of Health Sciences
Student Level Group
Graduate/Professional
Presentation Type
Poster
Melodic Intonation Therapy for Aphasia: Appraisal of Systematic Reviews. Thank you!
Melodic Intonation Therapy for Aphasia: Appraisal of Systematic Reviews Sarah Kazden, Shaunna Pentony, Natalia Rodriguez, Anastasia Raymer Background: Melodic intonation therapy (MIT) is an aphasia treatment approach that encourages use of right hemisphere prosody/musical capabilities to foster recovery in individuals with stroke-induced aphasia (Helm-Estabrooks & Albert, 1991). Specifically, MIT incorporates a treatment hierarchy to facilitate increased prosody and rhythmic hand tapping to improve verbal expression, presumably by engaging the right cerebral hemisphere. By 2012, a systematic review (SR) was published to summarize the growing MIT literature. Since that time more original studies and systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analyses (MAs) have been conducted to summarize the burgeoning MIT literature. Purpose: We conducted a critical appraisal of SRs and MAs to summarize the effects of MIT for stroke-induced aphasia. Methods: We examined the quality of 11 SRs/MAs that have summarized the findings of more than 65 original MIT studies. Using AMSTAR2 (Shea et al., 2017) we coded the methodological quality of the reviews and then summarized the review findings. Results: We found that the quality of the review papers has improved over time as research groups incorporated more rigorous methodologies. Early SRs were optimistic about the effects of MIT for all language measures. MAs since 2021 have presented a more cautious picture, reporting significant effects of MIT primarily for repetition tasks and some functional communication and naming measures. Discussion: While the effects of MIT are robust for improving repetition abilities, more caution is encouraged in expectations for improvements in functional communication. Overall, MIT may be considered an appropriate evidence-based intervention in clinical settings in adults with nonfluent aphasia. However, clinicians should be mindful of the limited scope and variability in the current evidence for MIT.