Rodrigo Nicolato

• Doctor of Medicine
• Professor (Associate) at Federal University of Minas Gerais

Burnout is most commonly defined as a syndrome characterized by emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and ineffectiveness, which occurs in response to chronic stressors at work. It can adversely affect health workers’ physical and mental health, and the quality of care provided. The COVID-19 pandemic increased stressors and could impact burnout prevalenc...

Acute ischemic stroke is a sudden neurological event caused by brain ischemia. Patients with large vessel occlusion are at high risk of developing significant cerebral edema, which can lead to rapid neurological decline. The optimal timing for decompressive hemicraniectomy to prevent further brain damage is still uncertain. This study aimed to iden...

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder with sex bias in disease onset and symptom severity. Recently, it was observed that females present more severe symptoms in the perimenstrual phase of the menstrual cycle. The administration of estrogen also alleviates schizophrenia symptoms. Despite this, little is known about symptom fluctuation over the menstru...

In this study, we aimed to investigate the influence of executive functions (EF) on motor adaptation. We compared the motor performance of adults with and without EF deficits. Those with EF deficits (n = 21) were individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) under medical treatment, and those without EF deficits (n = 21) comprise...

O presente artigo propõe uma reflexão sobre o problema da consciência à luz da fenomenologia. A abordagem fenomenológica parte da ideia de que a experiência subjetiva ocorre no momento em que sensações provenientes da interpretação de informações externas, advindas dos órgãos sensoriais e processadas pelo cérebro, geram sentimentos internos, ligado...

Background After >2 years of the Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic, it is well established how sleep symptoms are rising, especially among healthcare workers (HCW). The aim of this study is to evaluate what features are associated with sleep disturbances in the HCW population. Methods Cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of social an...

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder with sex bias in disease onset and symptom severity. Recently, it was observed that females present more severe symptoms in the perimenstrual phase of the menstrual cycle. The administration of estrogen also alleviates schizophrenia symptoms. Despite this, little is known about symptom fluctuation over the menstru...

Objective: Human T-cell leukemia virus type-I (HTLV-1) infection courses with a myelopathy, the Tropical Spastic Paraparesis (HAM/TSP). Method: In a case-control study, we compared the neuropsychological profile and functional characteristics in two case HTLV-1 infected groups, (asymptomatic and with HAM/TSP) with a control group negative for HTLV...

O cenário da pandemia de COVID-19 representa um desafio sem precedentes para a sociedade. Em que pese a importância das medidas imediatas visando à prevenção da propagação da doença, cuidados com os indivíduos acometidos e medidas para minimizar os impactos econômicos e sociais, a abordagem de temas relacionados à saúde mental da população em geral...

Background HTLV-1 infection is endemic in Brazil. About 1 to 2% of the Brazilian population is estimated to be infected, but most infected HTLV-1 individuals do not know about their own infection, which favors the continuity of sexual and vertical virus transmission. In addition, HTLV-1 associated central nervous system diseases and their pathophys...

Aim: The aim of this study is to evaluate the presence of a particular immunological profile in individuals long-term infected with HTLV-1, followed presenting different clinical courses. Materials & methods: Forty-eight individuals were evaluated for 19 cytokines analyzed in cerebrospinal fluid and plasma of patients with HTLV-1 presenting with...

An elevated human T cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) proviral load (PVL) is an important risk factor for HTLV-1-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP), although there is a considerable frequency of asymptomatic carriers (AC) with high PVL in blood. Our objective was to evaluate whether PVL quantified in cerebrospinal fluid...

This research sought to understand meanings and implications of the stigma related to bipolar disorder in relation to social processes and local cultural value systems. Seven semidirected individual interviews were performed with psychiatrists (from Belo Horizonte city, Minas Gerais State, Brazil) and analyzed with referential from the Medical Anth...

Objective: Translate, transcultural adaptation and application to Brazilian Portuguese of the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study - Activities of Daily Living (ADCS-ADL) scale as a cognitive screening instrument. Method: We applied the back translation added with pretest and bilingual methods. The sample was composed by 95 elderly individuals an...

The Human T-cell leukemia virus type-I (HTLV-1) is the causal agent of HTLV-associated myelopathy/Tropical Spastic Paraparesis (HAM/TSP). HAM/TSP is the result of demyelination and cell death in the spinal cord and disruption of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), mediated by a virus-induced inflammatory response. In this study, we applied Positron Emis...

The association between depressive symptoms and quality of life (QoL) is well established, however, little is known about the association of gestational depression and QoL. The purpose of this study is to address how GD impacts on QoL. Therefore, one hundred and eighty women in the second trimester of pregnancy were interviewed with an abbreviated...

Objectives: In 2012, Kamboh and colleagues published a genome-wide association study that identified the DCHS2 gene (rs1466662 T/A) influencing the age at onset of Alzheimer's disease (AD). We aimed to investigate if there is association between the DCHS2 gene and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and AD in a sample of the Brazilian popula...

Objective: Approximately one-half of all patients affected by bipolar disorder present with psychotic features on at least one occasion. Several studies have found that alterations in the activity of mesolimbic and prefrontal regions are related to aberrant salience in psychotic patients. The aim of the present study was to investigate the structu...

Cognitive functioning influences activities of daily living (ADL). However, studies reporting the association between ADL and neuropsychological performance show inconsistent results regarding what specific cognitive domains are related to each specific functional domains. Additionally, whether depressive symptoms are associated with a worse functi...

Suicide is one of the major causes of preventable death. We evaluated suicidality among pregnant women who participated in prenatal care in Brazil. A total of 255 patients were assessed using semi-structured interviews as well as the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and Mini-International Neuropsychiatri...

Previous studies suggest that executive functions influence the performance on visuoconstructional tasks. This study aims to investigate whether the relationship between planning ability and the copy of complex figures is mediated by distinct components of executive functions (i.e., working memory, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility). We...

Facial emotion recognition (FER) is one of the many cognitive deficits reported in bipolar disorder (BD) patients. The aim of this study was to investigate neuroanatomical correlates of FER impairments in BD type I (BD-I). Participants comprised 21 euthymic BD-I patients without Axis I DSM IV-TR comorbidities and 21 healthy controls who were assess...

Bipolar disorder (BD) is common in clinical psychiatric practice, and several studies have estimated its prevalence to range from 0.5 to 5% in community-based samples. However, no systematic review and meta-analysis of the prevalence of BD type 1 and type 2 has been published in the literature. We carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis o...

Postpartum depression is one of the most prevalent psychopathologies. Its prevalence is estimated to be between 10% and 15%. Despite its multifactorial etiology, it is known that genetics play an important role in the genesis of this disorder. This paper reviews epidemiological evidence supporting the role of genetics in postpartum depression (PPD)...

Antenatal depression (AD) can have devastating consequences. No existing scales are specifically designed to measure it. Common practice is to adapt scales originally developed for other circumstances. We designed this study to validate and determine the psychometric values for AD screening in Brazil. We collected clinical and socio-demographic dat...

Examine the association between polymorphisms in the AKT1 and AKTIP genes and late-onset depression (LOD). Major depressive disorder is one of the most prevalent neuropsychiatric diseases. LOD is a disorder that starts after 65 years old. AKT1 is a downstream enzyme that has been implicated in the pathogenesis of neurotransmitter-related disorders,...

Background: Sensorimotor deficits are an important phenomenological facet observed in patients with bipolar disorder (BD). However, there is little research on this topic. We hypothesize that the MPraxis test can be used to screen for motor impairments in BD aiming movements. Method: The MPraxis, which is a quick and easy-to-apply computerized t...

Objective: To propose and evaluate the psychometric properties of a multidimensional measure of activities of daily living (ADLs) based on the Katz and Lawton indices for Alzheimer's disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Methods: In this study, 85 patients with MCI and 93 with AD, stratified by age (≤ 74 years, > 74 years), completed...

The neuropsychological exam plays a central role in the assessment of elderly patients with cognitive complaints. It is particularly relevant to differentiate patients with mild dementia from those subjects with mild cognitive impairment. Formal education is a critical factor in neuropsychological performance; however, there are few studies that ev...

Objective: Depressive pseudodementia (DPD) is a clinical condition characterized by depressive symptoms followed by cognitive and functional impairment characteristics of dementia. Memory complaints are one of the most related cognitive symptoms in DPD. The present study aims to assess the verbal learning profile of elderly patients with DPD. Met...

Background Planning is a component of executive functions and refers to the ability to establish the best way to achieve a specific goal, considering the hierarchy of steps necessary to achieve it. There are two types of planning. The preplanning or look-ahead occurs before the initiation of the behavior to achieve the goal, involving elaboration...

Objective: to evaluate the utilization of the Edinburgh Postnatal depression scale (EPds) as an antepartum depression (aPd) screening tool in the public health system. Method: the scale was administered between the 4th and 6th month of pregnancy to 90 pregnant women whose prenatal appointments occurred at a public maternity hospital located in the...

The aim of the present study was to examinethe association between polymorphism in thecatechol-O-methyltransferase(COMT) gene and Alzheimer's disease (AD) in a Brazilianpopulation. The case-control method was used to study the association between AD and geneticvariants of COMT. Six tag single-nucleotide polymorphisms(SNPs) in the COMT gene were gen...

Abstract. This paper aims at reviewing the literature on the use of Rey’s Verbal Auditory Learning Test (RAVLT) with respect to its potential contribution to the differential diagnosis between normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease. We researched articles published in the last ten years, indexed in the databases of PubMed and Lilacs, which were desig...

To analyze the psychometric properties of the Token test (TT), a verbal comprehension test, and its applicability to the diagnosis of mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). One hundred and sixty participants (80 AD and 80 controls) performed the TT and a short battery of neuropsychological tests designed to evaluate general cognitive status, working memory...

The Tower of London (TOL) is used for evaluating planning skills, which is a component of the executive functions. Different versions and scoring criteria were developed for this task, and some of them present with different psychometrical properties. This study aimed to evaluate two specific scoring methods of the TOL in diagnosing Mild Cognitive...

O objetivo deste texto é revisar a literatura sobre o uso do Teste de Aprendizagem Auditivo Verbal de Rey (RAVLT) com relação ao seu potencial para contribuição ao diagnóstico diferencial entre o envelhecimento normal e doença de Alzheimer. Para tanto, foram pesquisados artigos publicados nos úl-timos dez anos, indexados nas bases de dados da PubMe...

CONTEXTO: O Teste de Aprendizagem Auditivo-Verbal de Rey (RAVLT) é amplamente utilizado para a avaliação da memória episódica. Suas propriedades psicométricas, porém, não foram bem analisadas no Brasil. OBJETIVOS: Buscar evidências de fidedignidade e validade de construto do RAVLT e analisar a influência de idade, gênero, escolaridade e sintomas de...

Recent finding suggests that in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) executive functions deficits may be a frequent clinical finding. Automatic and Controlled attentional processes are related to the allo-cation of cognitive resources in different stimuli, being important to executive functioning. The present study aims at assessing the hypothe...

The Tower of London (TOL) is a task used for assessing planning skills, a component of the executive functions. The present study aimed to investigate the contribution of TOL for the assessment of planning skills of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) patients. We also aimed to evaluate two specific scoring methods of the TOL’s correction (Krikorian’s...

Background: The Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) is widely used for the assessment of episodic memory. However, there are few studies in Brazil assessing its psychometric properties. Objectives: To search for evidence of reliability and construct validity of the RAVLT, and to assess the influence of age, schooling, gender, and depressive s...

Background: The aim of our study was to review the literature on the relationship between executive dysfunction (EDF) and the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD). Material/Methods: We searched for papers that addressed one or both of two questions: a) is there a causal relationship between EDF and BPSD?; b) What are the main hy...

OObjective: Executive functions and processing speed assessment in subjects diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) are often made by use of classical neuropsychological tasks (e.g.: Stroop Color Word Test). Drawbacks in instruments like the chromatic and linguistic properties of...

Evaluation of executive functions in pathological aging

Late-onset depression in the elderly: evaluation of verbal memory for differential diagnosis

Impairment of semantic memory in cases of cognitive decline in elderly patients

Relations between the effectiveness of planning and visual constructive apraxia in the elderly

Evaluation of episodic memory in elderly patients: use of RAVLT in Alzheimer’s and mild cognitive impairment

Evaluation of planning in elderly with Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment: the use of different criteria for correction in the Tower of London

A large body of evidence suggests that several aspects of face processing are impaired in autism and that this impairment might be hereditary. This study was aimed at assessing facial emotion recognition in parents of children with autism and its associations with a functional polymorphism of the serotonin transporter (5HTTLPR). We evaluated 40 par...

Objective: There is a consensus in the field of neuropsychological rehabilitation (NR) that to measure effectiveness of a particular treatment program, one should look at the results of neuropsychological tests before and after the rehabilitation program, as well as the result of neuroimaging techniques and questionnaires of daily living and/or oth...

Objective: This transversal study aims to evaluate the discriminant validity of the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) by comparing a sample of normal elderly with a patient at the initial stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Methods: Age and educational attainment matched patients at the initial stages of Alzheimer’s disease (n = 35) and normal el...

Male patient, 81 years, referred by Geriatry to Geriatric Psychiatry by presenting agitation, aggression and delusions . Initial evaluation raises doubts about the characteristics of delusions of grandeur and its differentiation from pseudologia fantastica or vain mythomania. He presents narcissist ic personality traits . It is also discussed th...

OBJETIVO: Diversos estudos sugerem que o processamento de emoções faciais está prejudicado em portadores de autismo e que tal prejuízo possa ser hereditário. Nós estudamos o reconhecimento de emoções faciais em parentes de primeiro grau de portadores de autismo e suas associações com o polimorfismo funcional de transportador de serotonina (5HTTLPR)...

OBJECTIVES: To verify the prevalence of depressive symptoms in women with breast cancer and identify risk factors associated to its occurrence. METHODS: It was a transversal study where 71 women with breast cancer were interviewed. Two instruments were applied, being one questionnaire used to verify sociodemographic and clinical data, and the Beck...

OBJETIVE: Conduct a bibliographic review of articles that deal a relationship between hypertension and emotional factors considering relevance of the subject. METHODS: Through an active search in the Virtual Health Library, querying the database MedLine (1997-2008), we used words of the Portuguese language. The chosen descriptors are "hypertension"...

Bipolar disorder (BPD) and schizophrenia (SCZ) are severe disorders representing an enormous social, familiar and individual burden, being SCZ the most disabling psychiatric disorder characterized by psychosis and cognitive impairment. It is well known that SCZ and BPD are associated with abnormalities in dopamine signaling pathway. Recent data in...

Schizophrenia (SCZ) and bipolar disorder (BPD) are severe illnesses representing an enormous social, familiar and individual burden that affect 1% of the population world-wide. Several evidences indicate abnormalities of the dopamine system in both SCZ and BPD. Neuronal calcium sensor-1 (NCS-1) is a protein that has many functions in neurotransmiss...

OBJECTIVE: The paper seeks to know the reality of the prescriptions for the attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder. METHOD: Non-systematic review of the descriptors "attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder" and "medication prescriptions", in Portuguese and in English similar. The limiters were: 10 years publishings until November 2008, Englis...

Although there is indirect evidence to suggest that glycogen is present in G. lamblia, to date it has not been purified and identified from this organism. In this study, a high molecular weight carbohydrate was purified and characterized and its physiological role as an energetic reserve was established. The monosaccharide constituents of the carbo...

Activation of the cytokine systems may be involved in the neuropathological changes occurring in the central nervous systems of schizophrenic patients. However, associations between the levels of cytokines and the severity of symptoms have not been completely established. It was the aim of this study to evaluate serum levels of tumor necrosis facto...

Olanzapine in the management of severe schizophreniform symptoms associated with thyrotoxicosis - Volume 20 Issue 4 - Guilherme N. M. De Oliveira, Maila de C. L. Neves, Rodrigo Nicolato, João V. Salgado, Antonio L. Teixeira

There is a growing body of evidence implicating the neurotrophin brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. As circulating BDNF levels may reflect the BDNF levels in the brain, we assessed serum BDNF in 40 institutionalized schizophrenic patients and 20 healthy controls. Serum BNDF levels were significantly incre...

Inflammatory and immune alterations occur and may be relevant in patients with schizophrenia. Chemokines are a subgroup of cytokines that play a major role in the recruitment of determined subsets of leukocytes into tissues. To date no study has evaluated whether levels of chemokines are altered in patients with schizophrenia. To evaluate serum lev...

Na classificação de Gralnick, de 1942, a folie à deux é dividida em quatro subtipos básicos: folie imposée, folie communiquée, folie simultannée e folie induite. O último termo se refere à adição de novas idéias delirantes por paciente previamente psicótico sob influência de outro paciente. Relatamos um caso de folie induite ocorrido entre mãe e fi...

OBJETIVOS: Os objetivos deste estudo foram identificar os instrumentos genéricos e específicos utilizados na avaliação da qualidade de vida (QV) e os seus resultados em sobreviventes de acidente vascular cerebral (AVC). MÉTODOS: Realizou-se revisão da literatura dos últimos dez anos, com população acima de 18 anos, nos bancos de dados MedLine e Lil...

In the Gralnick classification of 1942 the term folie à deux is classically divided into four basic subtypes: folie imposée, folie communiquée, folie simultannée and folie induite. This last one refers to the addiction of new delusions in a previous psychotic patient, under the influence of another patient. We report a case of folie induite that oc...

Objective: The purpose of this study is to identify generical and specific instruments used for valueing quality of life (QOL) and their outcomes in stroke survivors. Methods: Review of literature of last 10 years, with people above 18 years old, in MedLine and Lilacs database. The instruments used on the studies were validated for the their countr...

BACKGROUND: A classic amnestic syndrome is characterized by a significant impairment of the anterograde memory, a variable and transitory retrograde amnesia with preserved non-declarative memory. However, case reports of patients with disproportionate compromise of the retrograde memory have been described in the recent literature. OBJECTIVES: To r...

The objective of this study was to examine the association between the serotonin (5-HT)2A gene polymorphism (102T/C) and suicidal behavior in schizophrenic inpatients. We studied 129 subjects who met the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia according to a structured clinicai interview (MINI-PLUS), Patients underwent a semistructured interview to a...

The term ecstasy is used to describe various substances that share similar chemical structures and effects, often referring to 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine (3,4-MDMA). MDMA psychic effects are mainly hallucinatory and stimulatory. Current trends consider Cotard’s delusion as a delusional belief of being dead or having paralyzed or rotten...

We report the case of a patient with paranoid schizophrenia who developed two episodes of severe hepatotoxicity. They were attributed to the side effects of valproic acid and clozapine. This relationship was established by the temporal proximity between the onset of medication and the development of side effects, the clinical remission after drug c...

OBJECTIVE: We evaluated the Brazilian scientific production published in the year 2005 in the twenty psychiatric periodicals with high impact factor (IF) according to Journal of Citation Report (JCR), 2004. METHODS: From 90 periodicals with IF ranging from 11,207 to 0,13, we selected all articles from periodicals with IF higher than percentile 75 (...

In this paper, the effect of the alpha-scorpion toxin tityustoxin (TsTX) in the release of gamma-[(3)H]aminobutyric acid ([(3)H]GABA) from rat brain cortical slices is described. The TsTX-stimulatory effect on the release of [(3)H]GABA was dependent on incubation time and TsTX concentration, having an EC(50) of 0.33 microM. Tetrodotoxin (TTX) compl...