Chen W, Ye Q. Ji X, Zhang S, YangX, Zhou Q. Cong F, Chen W, Zhang X, Zhang B, Xia Y, Yuan T-F and Shan C (2015). Mirror neuron system-based therapy for aphasia rehabilitation. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1665.
Remember those Super-Duper Publication picture cards in your drawer? Have you ever sat down, and actually tried to imitate them? The picture cards are static (still) images of objects or people that speech pathologists have used to elicit language from clients who suffer from aphasia. This is understandable becausethey are easily accessibleand provide visual stimuli input for therapy. While there are benefits from using still picture cards in therapy, there has been growing evidence supporting an introductory cognitive intervention approach called action observation training (AOT). While watching someone else perform an action, neurons in the brain regions are activated to stimulate pathways (damaged or preserved) which may boost brain plasticity to re-wire and re-organize while the client is re-learning language.
In therapy, speech pathologists are looking at how people learn more efficiently, given a skill. With new evidence, researchers have been interested in how might mirror neuron systems in brain circuitry be involved in the brains ability to rewire and/or repair the damaged areas. Brain plasticity seems to be highly stimulus dependent and re-learning a skill requires interaction between the environment and how it is perceived. It may be that a dynamic multimodal/multisensory (e.g., video, audio input or hearing, seeing action) therapy approach like AOT may stimulate language re-learning and brain re• organization for retention in the brain in patients with aphasia.
If not still pictures, what makes this approach so special?
For speech and language pathologists, determining the best approach to teach a skill, type and amount of stimuli to present and type of feedback that may elicit optimal results for re-learning is a continuous process. Chen et al. (2015) provide preliminary evidence in support of AOT that may result in mirror neuron activation and brain plasticity and promote language function recovery in patients with aphasia. In this study, six subjects received three weeks of training protocol: (4 with an ABA design and 2 with BAB design). The researchers implemented two protocols: 1) Protocol A (i.e., Patients watched (video) hand action observation combined with repetition (e.g., name common everyday objects) through auditory input) and 2) Protocol B (Patients watched video of static objects under the same conditions as Protocol A. The researchers took care to control for fatigue/rebound effects and learning/practice from testing. Subjects who viewed hand actions with repetition (i.e., Protocol A) performed better than subjects who viewed static objects by video (i.e., Protocol B) as measured by the aphasia quotient of the WAB, Naming test and oral language subtests. Subjects receiving Protocol B showed decreases in performance compared to subjects from Protocol A. In addition, mirror neuron activity was noticeably higher during Protocol A as measured by fMRI brain imaging.
From the findings in the study, speech and language pathologists may find functional benefit from the use of a mirror neuron system activation based cognitive approach to aphasia therapy such as AOT (along with verbal repetition naming) to promote action-based language retrieval skills (e.g., lexical