Stroke victims regain speech through singing

Gottfried Schlaug, an associate professor of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre and Harvard Medical School, has found that patients who have suffered a stroke in the left side of the brain and are unable to speak words are often able to sing them.

He showed reporters at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science a video of a patient with a stroke lesion on the left side of the brain, whom he asked to recite the words of the birthday song.

The patient was unable to comply, and merely repeated the letters N and O.

But when Dr Schlaug asked him to sing the song, while someone held the patient's left hand and tapped it rhythmically, the words "happy birthday to you" came out clear as day.