Awareness and knowledge of dementia and its communication disorders amongst Brazilian speech and language therapists.

Background: Speech and language therapists (SLTs) play an important role in assessing and rehabilitating communication disorders in people with dementia, but there is evidence to suggest that they do not receive appropriate training to provide management and support during their training.

Aim: To investigate the level of awareness and knowledge that practising SLTs from Brazil have about dementia and their role in the care of dementia through an online survey.

Methods & Procedures: An online survey tool was developed to collect information from practising Brazilian SLTs regarding their knowledge about dementia, awareness about their role in the care of people with dementia, and opinions on how SLTs may be better prepared to work in the dementia field.

The Discourse Profile in Corticobasal Syndrome: A Comprehensive Clinical and Biomarker Approach.

The aim of this study was to characterize the oral discourse of CBS patients and to verify whether measures obtained during a semi-spontaneous speech production could differentiate CBS patients from controls. A second goal was to compare the performance of patients with CBS probably due to Alzheimer's disease (CBS-AD) pathology and CBS not related to AD (CBS-non-AD) in the same measures, based on the brain metabolic status (FDG-PET) and in the presence of amyloid deposition (amyloid-PET). Results showed that CBS patients were significantly different from controls in speech rate, lexical level, informativeness, and syntactic complexity.

Diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease: recommendations of the Scientific Department of Cognitive Neurology and Aging of the Brazilian Academy of Neurology.

This paper presents the consensus of the Scientific Department of Cognitive Neurology and Aging from the Brazilian Academy of Neurology on the diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer's disease (AD) in Brazil. The authors conducted a literature review regarding clinical and research criteria for AD diagnosis and proposed protocols for use at primary, secondary, and tertiary care levels. Within this clinical scenario, the diagnostic criteria for typical and atypical AD are presented as well as clinical, cognitive, and functional assessment tools and complementary propaedeutics with laboratory and neuroimaging tests.

Textual Inference Comprehension in Mild Cognitive Impairment: The Influence of Semantic Processing and Verbal Episodic Memory.

Language complaints, especially in complex tasks, may occur in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Various language measures have been studied as cognitive predictors of MCI conversion to Alzheimer's type dementia. Understanding textual inferences is considered a high-demanding task that recruits multiple cognitive functions and, therefore, could be sensitive to detect decline in the early stages of MCI.

Language in corticobasal syndrome: a systematic review.

Unlabelled: Language is commonly impacted in corticobasal syndrome (CBS). However, the profile and type of language assessment in CBS are poorly studied.

Objective: To identify language impairments in CBS.

Treatment of agrammatism in oral and written production in patients with Broca's aphasia The use of implicit and explicit learning.

Unlabelled: Several approaches to the rehabilitation of agrammatism use implicit and explicit learning methods.

Objective: To verify the effect of adapted Mapping Therapy and ORLA methods (explicit versus implicit learning) on the oral and written production in spontaneous language among agrammatic patients with Broca's aphasia.

Methods: Six individuals were submitted to Mapping Therapy and ORLA (Oral Reading for Language in Aphasia) treatments.

Inference comprehension from reading in individuals with mild cognitive impairment.

Inference comprehension is a complex ability that recruits distinct cognitive domains, such as language, memory, attention, and executive functions. Therefore, it might be sensitive to identify early deficits in subjects with MCI. To compare the performance of subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in an inference reading comprehension task, and to analyze the correlations between inferential comprehension and other cognitive functions.

Inference comprehension in text reading: Performance of individuals with right- versus left-hemisphere lesions and the influence of cognitive functions.

Background: Right-hemisphere lesions (RHL) may impair inference comprehension. However, comparative studies between left-hemisphere lesions (LHL) and RHL are rare, especially regarding reading comprehension. Moreover, further knowledge of the influence of cognition on inferential processing in this task is needed.

Auditory Processing Performance of the Middle-Aged and Elderly: Auditory or Cognitive Decline?

Background: Despite the well-established relationship between aging and auditory processing decline, identifying the extent to which age effect is the main factor on auditory processing performance remains a great challenge due to the co-occurrence of age-related hearing loss and age-related cognitive decline as potential confounding factors.

Purpose: To investigate the effects of age-related hearing loss and working memory on the clinical evaluation of auditory processing of middle-aged and elderly.

Research Design: Cross-sectional study.

Effect of education on listening comprehension of sentences on healthy elderly: analysis of number of correct responses and task execution time.

Purpose: To analyze the effect of education on sentence listening comprehension on cognitively healthy elderly.

Methods: A total of 111 healthy elderly, aged 60-80 years of both genders were divided into two groups according to educational level: low education (0-8 years of formal education) and high education (≥9 years of formal education). The participants were assessed using the Revised Token Test, an instrument that supports the evaluation of auditory comprehension of orders with different working memory and syntactic complexity demands.

Impact of Educational Level on Performance on Auditory Processing Tests.

Research has demonstrated that a higher level of education is associated with better performance on cognitive tests among middle-aged and elderly people. However, the effects of education on auditory processing skills have not yet been evaluated. Previous demonstrations of sensory-cognitive interactions in the aging process indicate the potential importance of this topic.

Healthy Aging and Compensation of Sentence Comprehension Auditory Deficits.

Objectives: To analyze the effect of aging on sentence auditory comprehension and to study the relationship between this language skill and cognitive functions (attention, working memory, and executive functions).

Methods: A total of 90 healthy subjects were divided into three groups: adults (50-59 years), young-old (60-69 years), and old-old (70-80 years). Subjects were assessed using the Revised Token Test.

Naming ability in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease: what changes occur with the evolution of the disease?

Objectives: Naming deficit is a linguistic symptom that appears in the initial phase of Alzheimer's disease, but the types of naming errors and the ways in which this deficit changes over the course of the disease are unclear. We analyzed the performance of patients with Alzheimer's disease on naming tasks during the mild and moderate phases and verified how this linguistic skill deteriorates over the course of the disease.

Methods: A reduced version of the Boston Naming Test was administered to 30 patients with mild Alzheimer's disease, 30 patients with moderate Alzheimer's disease and 30 healthy controls.

Inference comprehension during reading: influence of age and education in normal adults.

Purpose: To determine the effect of age and education on inferential comprehension from written texts in normal individuals.

Methods: A total of 224 normal adults were stratified into nine groups according to age (young: 18-39 years, adults: 40-59 years, and elderly: 60-79 years) and educational level (low ≤4 years, medium: 5-8 years and high >8 years) and were evaluated through the battery La gestion de l'implicite (Implicit Information Management Test) to determine the ability to make inferences through different types of questions: explicit, logical, distractor, pragmatic and others.

Results: The elderly showed worse performance for total score and distractor questions.

Sentence production in rehabilitation of agrammatism: A case study.

Agrammatism is characterized by morphosyntactic deficits in production of sentences. Studies dealing with the treatment of these deficits are scarce and their results controversial. The present study describes the rehabilitation of a case diagnosed as chronic Broca's aphasia, with agrammatism, using a method directed to sentence structural deficits.

Communication map of elderly people Sociodemographic and cognitive-linguistic aspects.

Unlabelled: Language and communication difficulties may occur in the elderly population. This is the case of the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon and receptive and auditory comprehension difficulties. Few studies have focused on examining the effects of social exposure on maintaining communication in the aging process.