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Biomedical subjects

Karin Zazo Ortiz

Publications and source records attributed to Karin Zazo Ortiz.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

[Language impairment in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease].

Alzheimer disease (AD) is usually associated with cognitive, language and behavioral impairments, which can get more and more serious as the disease progresses. The aim of this study is to verify language disorders in the early stages of this disease. Twelve patients meeting criteria for problable AD were evaluated by the Boston test, and all of them scored more than 23 points on the Mini-Mental State Examination. Data acquired on this language evaluation were compared with the average of normal population data. All patients showed language disorders. Statistical differences were found in visual confrontating naming and auditory comphrension tasks. The patients performed well in writing and reading tasks. We believe that there might have had an interference in the patient's linguistic task performance due to their memory impairment. We could find language impairments in the early stages of AD.

Aged↗

Staggered spondaic word test in epileptic patients.

CONTEXT: Auditory processing during childhood may be altered if there is any predisposing factor during the course of development. Neurological disorders are among the risk factors for auditory processing impairment. From this perspective, epileptic children present such a risk factor and could present auditory processing dysfunction. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate central auditory processing in epileptic patients using the Staggered Spondaic Word Test (SSW) in order to verify whether these patients presented auditory disorders and whether the type of crisis partial or generalized played a role in the occurrence and type of disorder. SETTING: Tertiary care hospital. SAMPLE: Thirty-eight children and adolescents, ranging from 7 to 16 years old, with a diagnosis of epilepsy divided into two groups: 23 patients with partial crisis and 15 patients with generalized crisis. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: Performance in the Staggered Spondaic Word Test versus epileptic crisis type (partial or generalized). RESULTS: The majority of epileptic patients showed central auditory processing disorders. There were no differences in relation to crisis type. Both groups showed similar performance, although the results observed for these patients differ from what is obtained with normal populations. With regard to response bias, there were also no differences in performance between subjects with partial or generalized seizures. All possible disorders were found in both groups, without the prevalence of one specific disorder over the other. CONCLUSIONS: This study revealed a high prevalence of disorders among epileptic patients in relation to processing partially overlapped verbal sounds in a dichotic paradigm.

Adolescent↗

[Dysarthria: a speech rate study].

BACKGROUND: speech rate in dysarthric patients. AIM: to obtain an objective measure of the speech rate of dysarthric patients during the reading of a standardized text and during spontaneous speech. METHOD: eleven subjects, with ages ranging from 18 to 69 years, were studied. For each dysarthric patient, 3 normal individuals of the same gender and age were evaluated, composing the control group. The speech samples were collected based on a reading of a standardized text and on a two minute conversation. Speech rate was analyzed in terms of words per minute. RESULTS: the analysis of the results demonstrated that in both situations of speech, the dysarthric group presented a statistically significant slower speech rate than the control group. CONCLUSION: the values of speech rate obtained in this study do not agree with other studies carried out in the English language.

Adolescent↗