Teaching stroke patients to sing "rewires" their brains, helping¹ them recover their speech, say scientists.

科学家称，教中风病人唱歌可以使他们的大脑“重新接线”，帮助他们恢复语言能力。

By singing, patients use a different area of the brain from the area involved in speech.

If a person's "speech centre" is damaged by a stroke, they can learn to use their "singing centre" instead.

Researchers presented these findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement² of Science (AAAS美国科学发展协会) in San Diego.

An ongoing³ clinical trial, they said, has shown how the brain responds to this "melodic⁴（有旋律的） intonation⁵（声调，语调） therapy".

Gottfried Schlaug, a neurology（神经学） professor at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, US, led the trial.

The therapy is already established as a medical technique. Researchers first used it when it was discovered that stroke patients with brain damage that left them unable to speak were still able to sing.

Professor Schlaug explained that his was the first study to combine this therapy with brain imaging - "to show what is actually going on in the brain" as patients learn to sing their words.

Making connections

Most of the connections between brain areas that control movement and those that control hearing are on the left side of the brain.

"But there's a sort of corresponding hole on the right side," said Professor Schlaug.

"For some reason, it's not as endowed with（被赋予，天生具有） these connections, so the left side is used much more in speech.

"If you damage the left side, the right side has trouble [fulfilling that role]."

But as patients learn to put their words to melodies, the crucial connections form on the right side of their brains.

Previous brain imaging studies have shown that this "singing centre" is overdeveloped in the brains of professional singers.

During the therapy sessions, patients are taught to put their words to simple melodies.

Professor Schlaug said that after a single session, a stroke patients who was are not able to form any intelligible⁶（可理解的，明了的） words learned to say the phrase "I am thirsty" by combining each syllable⁷ with the note of a melody.

The patients are also encouraged to tap out each syllable with their hands. Professor Schlaug said that this seemed to act as an "internal pace-maker" which made the therapy even more effective.

"Music might be an alternative medium to engage parts of the brain that are otherwise not engaged," he said.