Speech therapy changes blood circulation and oxygenation in the brain and muscle: a near-infrared spectrophotometry study.

Recently it has been shown that artistic speech therapy (AST) has effects on heart rate variability. The aim of this pilot study was to investigate whether AST also affects hemodynamics and tissue oxygenation in the brain and skeletal muscle measured by near infrared spectrophotometry(NIRS). The results show that ATS has effects on important physiological parameters, i.e., it leads to a decrease in cerebral blood flow during recitation and to brain activation thereafter.