Parkinson's Disease-Cognitive Rating Scale (PD-CRS): Normative Data and Mild Cognitive Impairment Assessment in Brazil.

Background: The Parkinson's Disease-Cognitive Rating Scale (PD-CRS) assesses posterior-cortical and frontal-subcortical cognitive functioning and distinguishes mild cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease (PD-MCI); however, it was not evaluated in Brazil. Objectives: To investigate PD-CRS's reliability, validity, normative data, and accuracy for PD-MCI screening in Brazil. Methods: The effects of age, education, and sex on PD-CRS scores were explored. The instrument was tested in 714 individuals (53% female, 21-94 years), with a broad range of education and no neurodegenerative disorder. Trail Making, Consonant Trigrams, Five-Point, and semantic fluency tests were administered for comparison. A second study enrolled patients with PD and intact cognition (n = 44, 59.75 ± 10.79 years) and with PD-MCI (n = 25, 65.76 ± 10.33 years) to investigate criterion validity. PD-CRS subtests were compared with the Cambridge Automated Neuropsychological Battery memory and executive tasks. Results: PD-CRS was unidimensional and reliable (McDonald's ω = 0.83). Using robust multiple regressions, age, and education predicted the total and derived scores in the normative sample. At the 85-point cutoff, PD-MCI was detected with 68% sensitivity and 86% specificity (area under the curve = 0.870). PD-CRS scores strongly correlated with executive and verbal/visual memory tests in both normative and clinical samples. Conclusions: This study investigated the applicability of PD-CRS in the Brazilian context. The scale seems helpful in screening for PD-MCI, with adequate internal consistency and construct validity. The PD-CRS variance is influenced by age and educational level, a critical issue for cognitive testing in countries with educational and cultural heterogeneity.

Literacy breaks mirror invariance for visual stimuli: a behavioral study with adult illiterates.

The ability to recognize 2 mirror images as the same picture across left-right inversions exists early on in humans and other primates. In order to learn to read, however, one must discriminate the left-right orientation of letters and distinguish, for instance, b from d. We therefore reasoned that literacy may entail a loss of mirror invariance. To evaluate this hypothesis, we asked adult literates, illiterates, and ex-illiterates to perform a speeded same-different task with letter strings, false fonts, and pictures regardless of their orientation (i.e., they had to respond "same" to mirror pairs such as "iblo oldi"). Literates presented clear difficulties with mirror invariance. This "mirror cost" effect was strongest with letter strings, but crucially, it was also observed with false fonts and even with pictures. In contrast, illiterates did not present any cost for mirror pairs. Interestingly, subjects who learned to read as adults also exhibited a mirror cost, suggesting that modest reading practice, late in life, can suffice to break mirror invariance.

How learning to read changes the cortical networks for vision and language.

Does literacy improve brain function? Does it also entail losses? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we measured brain responses to spoken and written language, visual faces, houses, tools, and checkers in adults of variable literacy (10 were illiterate, 22 became literate as adults, and 31 were literate in childhood). As literacy enhanced the left fusiform activation evoked by writing, it induced a small competition with faces at this location, but also broadly enhanced visual responses in fusiform and occipital cortex, extending to area V1. Literacy also enhanced phonological activation to speech in the planum temporale and afforded a top-down activation of orthography from spoken inputs. Most changes occurred even when literacy was acquired in adulthood, emphasizing that both childhood and adult education can profoundly refine cortical organization.

Creation of pneumoperitoneum: noninvasive monitoring of clinical effects of elevated intraperitoneal pressure for the insertion of the first trocar.

AIM: The aim of this work is to analyze, by means of noninvasive monitoring, the clinical effects of high intraperitoneal pressure for enough time to insert the first trocar. METHODS: Sixty-seven patients without significant lung problems were randomly divided into groups P12 (n = 30, maximum intraperitoneal pressure 12 mmHg) and P20 (n = 37, maximum intraperitoneal pressure 20 mmHg). A Veress needle was inserted into the left hypochondrium for creation of pneumoperitoneum. The parameters evaluated were heart rate (HR, in bpm), arterial oxygen saturation (SaO(2), expressed as percentage of hemoglobin saturated with oxygen), end-tidal CO(2) (ETCO(2), in mmHg), mean arterial pressure (MAP, in mmHg), and intratracheal pressure (ITP, in cmH(2)O). Clinical parameters were evaluated in both groups at time point 0 (TP0, before CO(2) insufflation), time point 1 (TP1, when intraperitoneal pressure of 12 mmHg was reached in both groups), time point 2 (TP2, 5 min after reaching intraperitoneal pressure of 12 mmHg in group P12 and of 20 mmHg in group P20), and time point 3 (TP3, 10 min after reaching intraperitoneal pressure of 12 mmHg in group P12 and 10 min after TP1 in group P20, when intraperitoneal pressure decreased from 20 to 12 mmHg). Values outside of the normal range or occurrence of atypical phenomena suggestive of organic disease indicated clinical changes. RESULTS: Statistically significant differences were observed between the two groups regarding HR, MAP, ETCO(2), and ITP. No significant clinical changes were observed. CONCLUSIONS: Transitory, high intraperitoneal pressure (20 mmHg for 5 min) for insertion of the first trocar resulted in changes in HR, MAP, ETCO(2), and ITP that were within the normal range, and no adverse clinical effects were observed. Therefore, the use of transitory, high intraperitoneal pressure is recommended to prevent iatrogenic injury during blind insertion of the first trocar. Nevertheless, it is not clear that this method would be safe in patients with moderate to severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Degree of illiteracy and phonological and metaphonological skills in unschooled adults.

Phonological and metaphonological skills are explored in 97 Brazilian illiterate and semiliterate adults. A simple letter- and word-reading task was used to define the degree of illiteracy. Phonemic awareness was strongly dependent on the level of letter and word reading ability. Phonological memory was very low in illiterates and unrelated to letter knowledge. Rhyme identification was relatively preserved in illiterates and semiliterates, and unrelated to letter and word reading level. Phonetic discrimination (minimal pairs) was fairly good and marginally related to reading ability. These results suggest that phonological sensitivity, phonological memory, rhyme identification, and phonemic awareness are distinctive cognitive processes, and that only phonemic awareness is clearly and strongly dependent on the alphabetical acquisition.