Capacidade funcional, declínio cognitivo e depressão em idosos institucionalizados: possibilidade de relações e correlações

This research was aimed to survey depressive episodes, functional and cognitive decline of an elderly population residing nursing homes (NH) located at Marília, São Paulo, Brazil, and, from statistical analysis, verify the potential correlations between depressive episodes, functional and cognitive decline, amongst themselves and with the variables: age, gender and education. There were subject to the research 57 elders living in the NH, aged between 59 and 98 and both sexes. The following tools were used to collect data: Mini Mental State Exam (MMSE) to evaluate cognitive faculty, Barthel Index (BI) to evaluate cognitive faculty and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI).

Indicadores de depressão e de declínio cognitivo em idosos institucionalizados: um estudo de caso

This case study objectified investigating the symptomatology prevalence for depression (DP) and cognitive decline (CD) on institutionalized elderly’s; verifying the existence of correlations between DP and CD with age, gender and scholarity; and analyzing the possible correlations between symptomatology for DP and CD. For the realization of this research were selected, in two Elderly’s Long-Permanence Institutions (ELPIs), 24 subjects, which were classified according to gender, scholarity and age group. To verify the occurrence of CD, the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) was applied and, for the incidence of DP, the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) was applied. The data were tabulated and descriptively analyzed. For the study of the relations between quantitative variables, the Pearson correlation test was utilized and also the Spearmann test when necessary; for the comparison between two independent groups, the Student's t-test was utilized; for the verification of the association between gender, scholarity, DP and CD indicatives, the Pearson's X2 test and, due to theoretical restriction, the Fisher's exact test were utilized. The level of 5% probability was adopted for the rejection of nullity's hypothesis on all the tests. The research demonstrated that 50% of the research' subjects presented DP indicatives and 54.2% presented CD indicatives. Associations between: gender and DP (p = 0.414), gender and CD (p = 0.219), scholarity and CD (p = 0.527) were not observed. Positive regular correlation was verified between age and DP (r = 0.557; p = 0.005) and negative regular correlation was verified between DP and CD (r = -0.406; p = 0.049). The data suggest that DP might be a reaction to CD perceived by the subject. However, the hypothesis that indicates DP as a risk factor for CD and DM cannot be overruled, which suggests the importance of monitoring and treating depressive episodes on elderly populations.

Declínio cognitivo e depressão em idosos institucionalizados e não institucionalizados: possibilidades de correlação

With aging, naturally occurs the decline of several functions. The depression (DP), pointed to be a risk factor for cognitive decline (DC), is frequent amongst elders. Activities aimed at cognitive rehabilitation (RC) can be protective for DP and DC. Objectives: Analyze the association between DC and DP on institutionalized elders (IDI) and non-institutionalized elders (IDNI) and verify the protective function (regarding DP and DC) of RC activities. Design and Method: For the analysis were selected 48 elders, from both genders, from where 24 were institutionalized and 24 were not. The subjects were distributed in four subgroups: 1) IDI participating RC (n=12); 2) non participant IDI on RC (n=12); 3) IDNI participating UNATI (“Open College for the Elderly”) and attendees of Memory Workshop (MW) (n=12) and; 4) IDNI participating UNATI, not attending MW (n=12). The data were gathered from the instruments: Mini Mental State Exam (MEEM) to determine the degree of DC and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) to verify the symptomatology of DP. Results: From the general sample, 8,3% of the subjects presented indicatives of DC and 52,1% traces of DP. Lesser educated elders showed more incidence of DC and DP. There was no meaningful related to the DC prevalence and DP related to gender. Among the IDI there were more incidence of DC and DP than the IDNI. There were no meaningful differences in terms of scores acquired by MEEM and BDI for the subjects participating and not participating RC activities or MW. Conclusion: Therefore, it is necessary the development and application of curative and preventive strategies for depressive disorder. Special attention must be given for INI, more vulnerable to DP and DC.

Correlação entre habilidades cognitivo-linguísticas em escolares com dificuldades de aprendizagem

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

A importância da música no desenvolvimento cognitivo, afetivo e social: educação infantil e fundamental I

Estudos comprovam que os fetos desde o útero já respondem a estímulos sonoros e que a música, por sua vez, pode influenciar no desenvolvimento cognitivo, afetivo e social do individuo. É a partir de tais considerações que o presente trabalho identifica, através de levantamento bibliográfico mais aprofundado, quais os fatores que a linguagem musical pode desenvolver nas crianças e como tal linguagem se constitui num “treinamento” para o cérebro, visando, primordialmente, a busca de novas práticas de aprendizagem. Analisamos, ainda, o currículo de formação dos professores do curso de Licenciatura Plena em Pedagogia das universidades federais e estaduais brasileiras, observando a ênfase dada à modalidade do ensino de música nos cursos de formação de professores unidocentes. Por fim buscamos oferecer subsídios metodológicos, dos quais os professores unidocentes possam lançar mão para o desenvolvimento de atividades destinadas ao trabalho com musicalização infantil

Exercício físico, marcadores inflamatórios e genótipo da APOE em idosos com comprometimento cognitivo leve e idosos cognitivamente preservados

Pós-graduação em Ciências da Motricidade - IBRC

Desenvolvimento cognitivo e sintomas depressivos em adolescentes que fazem uso de bebidas alcoólicas

Surveys on alcohol use show that people usually begin using this substance as adolescents. In this stage of development, it is common for some people to show depressive symptoms. The combination of alcohol and depressive symptoms may affect students’ cognitive and school development. This study aims at identifying and discussing on the relationship between alcohol use in adolescents, depression and the consequences on cognitive development. Participants were 127 students of two schools in the state of São Paulo, who answered the AUDIT, the BDI and Tests for Operatory Development. Results show that excessive alcohol use is significant, but we did not observe a relationship between alcohol use, depressive symptoms and low cognitive performance.

Potencial Cognitivo Auditivo e vectoeletronistagmografia em escolares com dislexia e distúrbios de aprendizagem

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Capitalismo cognitivo e a dinâmica da pequena produção agrícola alternativa no contexto local de araraquara o caso do sai sistema agroindustrial integrado do SEBRAE/SP

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Um modelo cognitivo baseado na atenção para consciência em robôs inteligentes

Understanding consciousness is one of the most fascinating challenges of our time. From ancient civilizations to modern philosophers, questions have been asked on how one is conscious of his/her own existence and about the world that surrounds him/her. Although there is no precise definition for consciousness, there is an agreement that it is strongly related to human cognitive processes such as: thinking, reasoning, emotions, wishes. One of the key processes to the arising of the consciousness is the attention, a process capable of promoting a selection of a few stimuli from a huge amount of information that reaches us constantly. Machine consciousness is the field of the artificial intelligence that investigate the possibility of the production of conscious processes in artificial devices. This work presents a review about the theme of consciousness - in both natural and artificial aspects -, discussing this theme from the philosophical and computational perspectives, and investigates the feasibility of the adoption of an attentional schema as the base to the cognitive processing. A formal computational model is proposed for conscious agents that integrates: short and long term memories, reasoning, planning, emotion, decision making, learning, motivation and volition. Computer experiments in a mobile robotics domain under USARSim simulation environment, proposed by RoboCup, suggest that the agent can be able to use these elements to acquire experiences based on environment stimuli. The adoption of the cognitive architecture over the attentional model has potential to allow the emergence of behaviours usually associated to the consciousness in the simulated mobile robots. Further implementation under this model could potentially allow the agent to express sentience, selfawareness, self-consciousness, autonoetic consciousness, mineness and perspectivalness. By performing computation over an attentional space, the model also allows the ...