DESEMPENHO COGNITIVO DE PESSOAS COM ACIDENTE VASCULAR ENCEFÁLICO.

Abstract

Recent studies reveal the high frequency of individuals who are affected by stroke and the cognitive dysfunctions they feature consequently. This paper seeks to assess the cognitive impairments of experiencing a stroke and, more specifically, to evaluate the cognitive performance of people affected by stroke according to hemisphere and artery affected. The paper is divided into two main parts. At first, a theoretical review about the neuropsychological impairments in individuals with stroke was made with the goal of understanding the relationship between brain areas and the cognitive performance of these individuals. For this, a bibliographical survey was conducted in major databases on this subject, describing the theoretical aspects related to Neuroscience, stroke and resulting cognitive dysfunctions assessed by neuropsychological avaliation. It has been found that, as for the etiological description, identification of the types and anatomical structures altered, there is a wide literature, but in relation to cognitive impairment and specific brain areas of research conducted in the field of neurophysiology there is a paucity of publications. Research indicates that it is of fundamental importance more studies intending to show, more and more, the cognitive difficulties in people afflicted with a disease so common in society. Then, in Part 2, an empirical study was conducted with the objective of evaluating the cognitive performance according to hemisphere and artery affected in different neuropsychological tests. Participated in the study 30 patients with a diagnosis of stroke, with the age group between 24-60 years. According to the data, we observe a significant difference according to the lesioned hemisphere only in alternation skills, auditory span, visual-construction, lexical and semantic verbal fluency and verbal comprehension. Regarding to the affected arteries, significant differences were found in selective attention, abstraction, naming, phonetic verbal fluency, verbal comprehension, visual-constructional praxis and recognition of the mnemonic process. The present study as well as providing an understanding of neuropsychological and cognitive impairments of patients injured by stroke, can assist in the development of neuropsychological assessment batteries for people affected by stroke and rehabilitation strategies from possibilities of cognitive dysfunctions according to compromised region after stroke. In general, the two parts of the dissertation contribute to the theoretical extension about cognitive dysfunctions of patients suffering from stroke and consequently the identification of these dysfunctions may thus help to improve care for patients with this disease.