Broca’s Aphasia is a debilitating expressive language disorder that generates production problems with sufferers, most commonly resulting in non-fluent and slow speech. The French neuroanatomist Paul Broca first discovered Broca’s area in 1861 when he dissected the brain of his patient, ‘tan’, with an area of damage in the left frontal cortex, which resultantly became known as Broca’s area (Dronkers, Plaisant, Iba-Zizen & Cabanis, 2007). Due to Broca’s area being situated in the left hemisphere of the brain the main effect suffered is language problems, however there are often commonly associated weaknesses with the limb movement of the right side of the body. Broca’s aphasia, a result of damage to Broca’s area, is most often a consequence…show more content… The current practise is to mould the therapy around a patient’s condition and individualise their recovery. Many mechanisms and methods have been used to help treat aphasia with an emphasis being established on communication within the patient’s family and caregivers in daily life. This is because the first few months after the injury or stroke the patient will undergo a period of spontaneous recovery in which they regain a great deal of language function. Some of the main treatments used during this time are Singing and melodic intonation therapy, Pharmacotherapy and Constraint-induced therapy (Cherney, 2012). Singing and melodic intonation therapy also known as MIT attempts to treat Broca’s aphasia by getting patients to sing, and thus accessing the language capable regions of the right hemisphere which would not be damaged in a Broca’s patient. This has shown good results with many patients being able to sing sentences, which could not be spoken with the patient’s normal voice. This has furthermore been proven by studies that show that MIT can result in greater recovery when compared to non-intonation therapy (Wilson, Parsons & Reutens, 2006). Constraint-induced therapy (CIAT) and Pharmacotherapy are significantly different to MIT. Whilst MIT attempts to bypass the damaged area in the left hemisphere these two treatments attempt to heal the affected area directly though medication and intense therapy sessions. CIAT abides by two principles, intense treatment and that language is used to interact by communication paired with non-verbal action. This aims to re-establish old neural pathways and recruit new neural pathways to compensate for lost function. This is somewhat similar to Pharmacotherapy as it aims to use drugs to similarly fix neural pathways and give the affected areas the ability to partially rebuild. This treatment is new however
