Revisiting the Dissociation Between Singing and Speaking in Expressive Aphasia

We investigated the production of sung and spoken utterances in a non-fluent patient, C.C., who had a severe expressive aphasia following a right-hemisphere stroke, but whose language comprehension and memory were relatively preserved. In experiment 1, C.C. repeated familiar song excerpts under four different conditions: spoken lyrics, sung lyrics on original melody, lyrics sung on new but familiar melody and melody sung to a neutral syllable "la". In experiment 2, C.C. repeated novel song excerpts under three different conditions: spoken lyrics, sung lyrics and sung-to-la melody. The mean number of words produced under the spoken and sung conditions did not differ significantly in either experiment. The mean number of notes produced was not different either in the sung-to-la and sung conditions, but was higher than the words produced, hence showing a dissociation between C.C.'s musical and verbal productions. Therefore, our findings do not support the claim that singing helps word production in non-fluent aphasic patients. Rather, they are consistent with the idea that verbal production, be it sung or spoken, result from the operation of same mechanisms.