Camila Rosa de Oliveira

Instrumentos de avaliação breve da comunicação: ferramentas existentes e sua aplicabilidade clínica

TEMA: a avaliacao breve da comunicacao e um recurso util aos profissionais da saude, pois fornece informacoes que subsidiam tanto o diagnostico funcional, quanto o planejamento e a execucao de avaliacoes expandidas e de medidas de reabilitacao a serem realizados em cada caso. OBJETIVO: apresentar uma revisao sistematica acerca do uso de instrumentos padronizados de avaliacao breve da comunicacao e caracterizar as populacoes alvo descritas. CONCLUSAO: encontraram-se 18 artigos, com 10 instrumentos breves, sendo a populacao mais examinada a de pacientes pos-acidente vascular cerebral. Os componentes linguisticos prevalentes nas avaliacoes foram expressao, compreensao, leitura e escrita.

Phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks: normative data for elderly Brazilians

Este estudo buscou investigar a influencia de caracteristicas sociodemograficas no desempenho de idosos em duas tarefas de fluencia verbal, alem de fornecer dados normativos de referencia nessas tarefas, conforme niveis de educacao, para a populacao brasileira de idosos saudaveisu200bu200b. A amostra inicial incluiu 521 idosos com idade a partir 60 anos, participantes do Programa Estrategia Saude na Familia. Foram excluidos os participantes que tinham pontuacoes sugestivas de declinio cognitivo no Mini Exame do Estado Mental, de sintomas depressivos na Escala de Depressao Geriatrica e com autorrelato de doencas neurologicas ou de disturbios psiquiatricos. A amostra final foi composta por 218 participantes que responderam a tarefa de fluencia verbal fonemica (letras F, A e S) e 265 que responderam a tarefa semântica (animais). O desempenho em ambas as tarefas foi associado a idade e aos anos de ensino formal, mas nao ao sexo. Ainda, a variavel escolaridade mostrou ter um impacto maior no desempenho de fluencia verbal do que a idade em ambas as modalidades de evocacao. Os resultados desse estudo sugerem a importância de oferecer dados normativos de idosos brasileiros, adequados a idade e a escolaridade, em tarefas de fluencia verbal.

Pragmatic and executive functions in traumatic brain injury and right brain damage: An exploratory comparative study

Objective To describe the frequency of pragmatic and executive deficits in right brain damaged (RBD) and in traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients, and to verify possible dissociations between pragmatic and executive functions in these two groups. Methods The sample comprised 7 cases of TBI and 7 cases of RBD. All participants were assessed by means of tasks from the Montreal Communication Evaluation Battery and executive functions tests including the Trail Making Test, Hayling Test, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, semantic and phonemic verbal fluency tasks, and working memory tasks from the Brazilian Brief Neuropsychological Assessment Battery NEUPSILIN. Z-score was calculated and a descriptive analysis of frequency of deficits (Z< -1.5) was carried out. Results RBD patients presented with deficits predominantly on conversational and narrative discursive tasks, while TBI patients showed a wider spread pattern of pragmatic deficits. Regarding EF, RBD deficits included predominantly working memory and verbal initiation impairment. On the other hand, TBI individuals again exhibited a general profile of executive dysfunction, affecting mainly working memory, initiation, inhibition, planning and switching. Pragmatic and executive deficits were generally associated upon comparisons of RBD patients and TBI cases, except for two simple dissociations: two post-TBI cases showed executive deficits in the absence of pragmatic deficits. Discussion Pragmatic and executive deficits can be very frequent following TBI or vascular RBD. There seems to be an association between these abilities, indicating that although they can co-occur, a cause-consequence relationship cannot be the only hypothesis.

The Effect of Corrective Feedback on Performance in Basic Cognitive Tasks: An Analysis of RT Components

The current work examines the effect of trial-by-trial feedback about correct and error responding on performance in two basic cognitive tasks: a classic Stroop task (n = 40) and a color-word matching task (n = 30). Standard measures of both RT and accuracy were examined in addition to measures obtained from fitting the ex-Gaussian distributional model to the correct RTs. For both tasks, RTs were faster in blocks of trials with feedback than in blocks without feedback, but this difference was not significant. On the other hand, with respect to the distributional analyses, providing feedback served to significantly reduce the size of the tails of the RT distributions. Such results suggest that, for conditions in which accuracy is fairly high, the effect of corrective feedback might either be to reduce the tendency to double-check before responding or to decrease the amount of attentional lapsing.

Depressive signs and cognitive performance in patients with a right hemisphere stroke

PURPOSEnThis study investigated the influence of suggestive signs of depression (SSD) in right-hemisphere brain-damaged (RHD) patients following a stroke on their cognitive performance measured by a brief neuropsychological assessment battery.nnnMETHODSnForty-two adults with RHD after a single episode of stroke and 84 matched controls participated in this study. They were assessed by means of the Geriatric Depression Scale and by Brief Neuropsychological Assessment Battery NEUPSILIN.nnnRESULTSnAlmost half of the patients showed SSD. The RHD group with SSD (RHD+) showed poorer performance in at least one task among all evaluated cognitive domains (concentrated attention, visual perception, working memory, episodic verbal memory and semantic memory, auditory and written language, constructional praxia and verbal fluency).nnnCONCLUSIONnThe association of depression and RHD seems to enhance the occurrence and the severity of cognitive déficits. A brief neuropsychological assessment can be useful to identify cognitive impairment caused by this neuropsychiatric disorder.

Instrumentos para avaliação da linguagem pós-lesão cerebrovascular esquerda

O tema deste estudo e a avaliacao padronizada da linguagem em pacientes com lesao cerebrovascular esquerda (LHE) que pode ser muito util no estabelecimento do diagnostico, prognostico e plano terapeutico, complementando observacao, entrevistas e tarefas clinicas. Este estudo teve como objetivo identificar quais instrumentos de investigacao de linguagem tem sido utilizados para avaliacao de quadros neurologicos subitos envolvendo o hemisferio esquerdo (HE) e analisar quais componentes linguisticos sao os mais avaliados. Foi possivel identificar nove instrumentos utilizados internacionalmente que avaliam diferentes componentes linguisticos em pacientes com LHE; no contexto nacional, porem, foram encontradas apenas duas baterias para avaliacao dessa populacao, ficando evidente a necessidade da construcao e/ou de adaptacao de instrumentos para a populacao brasileira. Os componentes linguisticos mais investigados foram nomeacao e compreensao oral, respectivamente. A avaliacao da linguagem torna-se essencial nos quadros envolvendo o HE, pois deficits linguisticos podem acarretar prejuizos sociais, ocupacionais e familiares.

Efeito de um Programa de Treinamento da Memória de Trabalho em Adultos Idosos

The present study examined the effects of a Working Memory Training (WMT) in healthy elderly. Twenty participants comprised the final sample, eleven from the experimental group (WMT) and nine from the control group (socialization). Every subject underwent a neuropsychological evaluation pre and post-intervention. The meetings were held once a week, for three months. Results indicated that subjects in the experimental group improved cognitive functions related to concentrated attention, learning, short-term and episodic memory. Subjects in the control group also demonstrated, in a smaller number of variables, improvement in concentrated attention and episodic memory. WMT seems to have generated a transfer effect, especially to episodic memory, which is directly related to the subsystem of working memory (WM), suggesting that WMT may be useful in the context of the neuropsychology of aging.

Executive functions and sustained attention:Comparison between age groups of 19-39 and 40-59 years old

Few studies involving the cognition of middle-aged adults are available in the international literature, particularly investigating the process of cognitive aging, executive components and attention. Objectives The aim of this study was to investigate whether there are differences in performance on neuropsychological tasks of executive functions and sustained attention between two age groups. Methods The sample consisted of 87 adults aged from 19 to 59 years old, divided into two groups according to the age variable (younger adults and middle-aged adults). All participants were Brazilian and had no sensory, psychiatric or neurological disorders; subjects also had no history of alcohol abuse, and no self-reported use of illicit drugs or antipsychotics. The neuropsychological instruments administered were the Hayling Test, Trail Making Test, Bells Test and verbal fluency tasks. Results Groups showed no significant differences in relation to sociodemographic variables, educational level or frequency of reading and writing habits. The younger adult group performed better than the middle-aged group on tasks that involved mainly processing speed, cognitive flexibility and lexical search. Conclusions These findings serve as a valuable reference for cognitive processing in middle-aged adults, since a large number of comparative studies focus only on the younger and later phases of adulthood. Additional studies are needed to investigate possible interaction between different factors such as age and education.

Working memory intervention programs for adults A systematic review

This systematic review aimed to identify the designs, procedures, and results of empirical studies that performed neuropsychological interventions on WM in adults. Methods A PubMed and LILACS literature search was conducted using the keywords working memory AND (training OR rehabilitation OR intervention) AND adult. Results Of the seven studies found, three were randomized controlled trials, two were case reports, one was a clinical trial, and one was an evaluation study. With regard to the type of programs and samples, three studies employed global programs with healthy elderly adults and four employed specific programs for samples with neurologically-impaired adults. Conclusions The effectiveness of the WM intervention programs was more evident in studies that employed specific methods of rehabilitation for samples with neurological disorders than in those based on global programs with healthy adults. There is a need for more empirical studies to verify the effectiveness of WM intervention programs in order to provide adequate guidance for clinical neuropsychologists and future research.

Animal Hoarding Disorder: A new psychopathology?

This study aimed to characterize the sociodemographic profile of animal hoarders in a southern city of Brazil. In addition, it aimed to propose Animal Hoarding Disorder as a new nosological category, distinct from Hoarding Disorder. Thirty-three individuals with Animal Hoarding Disorder, 73% female and 60% elderly, composed the sample. The average age of the sample was 61.39 years (SD = 12.69) and the average period that individuals hoarded or lived with a large number of animals was 23.09 years (SD = 15.98.) It was observed that 56.7% of the sample hoarded other inanimate objects, besides the animals. The total number of hoarded animals was 1.357 and the average number of animals per hoarder was approximately 41 (SD = 24.41). Significant differences between hoarding disorder and animal hoarding are discussed. Unlike hoarded objects, hoarded animals generally do not obstruct domicile environments. The processes of disengaging from or donating animals also differ from those of object hoarding, since there is an affectional bond with lives and not with unanimated objects. In this sense, the characterization of Animal Hoarding Disorder as a new mental disorder may arouse great interest from both clinical professionals and researchers.