Treatment of motor aprosodia with pitch biofeedback and expression modelling

Abstract

In motor aprosodia, imitation and production of emotional prosody and facial gestures are compromised. Despite the frequency with which aprosodia occurs after brain damage, and its potential to cause social and vocational disability, no formal treatments are available for this disorder. A case of motor aprosodia treated with voice pitch biofeedback and modelling of affective communication is presented. Utilizing the patient as her own control, the affective communication treatment was compared to traditional rehabilitation therapy. The results obtained suggest that affective communication treatment has potential in improving affective communication in brain-injured patients. Also notable was the fact that the improvements in emotional expression were stable over a 2-month follow-up period, and could not be attributed to recovery of function as a result of time passage, the effect of traditional rehabilitation, the effect of the extra attention paid to the patient, or examiner bias.