Did depressive symptoms affect recognition of emotional prosody in Parkinson’s disease?

Objective: Evaluate the influence of depressive symptoms on the recognition of emotional prosody in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients, and identify types of emotion on spoken sentences. Methods: Thirty-five PD patients and 65 normal participants were studied. Dementia was checked with the Mini Mental State Examination, Clinical Dementia Rating scale, and DSM IV. Recognition of emotional prosody was tested by asking subjects to listen to 12 recorded statements with neutral affective content that were read with a strong affective expression. Subjects had to recognize the correct emotion by one of four descriptors (angry, sad, cheerful, and neutral). The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was employed to rate depressive symptoms with the cutoff 14. Results: Total ratings of emotions correctly recognized by participants below and above the BDI cutoff were similar among PD patients and normal individuals. PD patients who correctly identified neutral and anger infl ections presented higher rates of depressive symptoms (p = 0.011 and 0.044, respectively). No significant differences were observed in the normal group. Conclusions: Depression may modify some modalities of emotional prosody perception in PD, by increasing the perception of non-pleasant emotions or lack of affection, such as anger or indifference

Anartria Pura: Estudo de Dois Casos Pure Anartria: Study of Two Cases

O marco do nascimento da neurolingüística é considerado a publicação do livro A síndrome de Desintegração Fonética, em 1939, que teve como autores: um neurologista, um psicólogo e uma lingüista. Dez anos mais tarde foi publicado, pela mesma equipe de pesquisadores franceses, o distúrbio de fala do paciente portador de anartria pura. No presente artigo, situaremos as polêmicas históricas a respeito de um distúrbio seletivo de fala de origem telencefálica, apresentaremos o primeiro caso descrito, acompanhado da descrição anátomo-patológica do cérebro que estivera guardado em formol por 20 anos e, realizada por um de nós (ARL), e por fim, apresentaremos um caso brasileiro, cujas imagens tomográficas de seu cérebro e espectográficas de sua fala e voz confirmam o trabalho pioneiro de Alajouanine, Pichot e Durant.<br>The mark of birth of neuro-linguistics is considered the publication of the book The Syndrome of Phonetic Disintegration, in 1939, that had as authors: a neurologist, a psychologist and a linguistics. Ten years later the same team of French researchers published about, the disturbance of speech of the patient carrier of pure Anartria. In the present article, we will place the historical polemics regarding a selective disturbance of speech of telencephalic origin and present the first described case, accompanied by the anatomic-pathological description of the brain that had been kept in formol by 20 years accomplished by one of us (ARL). Finally, we will present a Brazilian case, with tomographic images of its brain and spectrographic evaluation of its speech and voice that confirm the pioneer work of Alajouanine, Pichot and Durant

NEOTROPICAL ALIEN MAMMALS: a data set of occurrence and abundance of alien mammals in the Neotropics

Biological invasion is one of the main threats to native biodiversity. For a species to become invasive, it must be voluntarily or involuntarily introduced by humans into a nonnative habitat. Mammals were among first taxa to be introduced worldwide for game, meat, and labor, yet the number of species introduced in the Neotropics remains unknown. In this data set, we make available occurrence and abundance data on mammal species that (1) transposed a geographical barrier and (2) were voluntarily or involuntarily introduced by humans into the Neotropics. Our data set is composed of 73,738 historical and current georeferenced records on alien mammal species of which around 96% correspond to occurrence data on 77 species belonging to eight orders and 26 families. Data cover 26 continental countries in the Neotropics, ranging from Mexico and its frontier regions (southern Florida and coastal-central Florida in the southeast United States) to Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay, and the 13 countries of Caribbean islands. Our data set also includes neotropical species (e.g., Callithrix sp., Myocastor coypus, Nasua nasua) considered alien in particular areas of Neotropics. The most numerous species in terms of records are from Bos sp. (n = 37,782), Sus scrofa (n = 6,730), and Canis familiaris (n = 10,084); 17 species were represented by only one record (e.g., Syncerus caffer, Cervus timorensis, Cervus unicolor, Canis latrans). Primates have the highest number of species in the data set (n = 20 species), partly because of uncertainties regarding taxonomic identification of the genera Callithrix, which includes the species Callithrix aurita, Callithrix flaviceps, Callithrix geoffroyi, Callithrix jacchus, Callithrix kuhlii, Callithrix penicillata, and their hybrids. This unique data set will be a valuable source of information on invasion risk assessments, biodiversity redistribution and conservation-related research. There are no copyright restrictions. Please cite this data paper when using the data in publications. We also request that researchers and teachers inform us on how they are using the data