Successful aging (SA) is a current positive aging-related perspective and it is important to determine the variables associated with this concept. Most longitudinal population-based studies on predictors of SA were carried out in developed countries.Objective:This investigation evaluated which baseline characteristics predicted successful aging in 16 years of follow-up in a southern Brazilian cohort - the Porto Alegre Longitudinal Aging study.Methods:At baseline, 345 community-dwelling healthy independent individuals aged 60 or older were assessed for medical and psychiatric conditions, memory, orientation, judgment and problem solving, functioning in the community and at home, and hobbies. SA, according to Rowe and Kahn’s definition, was the outcome assessed in the last evaluation at a maximum 16-year follow-up. All baseline variables were evaluated as potential predictors for the outcome SA.Results:Of the 345 individuals evaluated at baseline, 32 (9.3%) participants were classified as successful agers in the follow-up. Younger age (OR=0.926, 95%CI=0.863-0.994), female gender (OR=0.226, 95%CI=0.072-0.711) and higher MMSE (OR=1.220, 95%CI=1.031-1.444) were predictors of SA for the 16-year follow-up in a logistic regression model.Conclusion:In contrast with our previous hypothesis, the impact of the socioeconomic and socio-environmental characteristics was small, as was the baseline classification into successful and normal aging.

Among linguistic-cognitive failures, the retelling of stories and lexical disorders occur from the onset of AD. Recent studies have discussed whether lexical failures in AD patients include naming actions.ObjectivesThe aims of this study were to verify naming and reformulation of action difficulties in AD patients and their relationship with the retelling of stories. Our main questions were: Are there two linguistic abilities impaired in the early stages of AD? Is there some correlation between the capacity of naming actions and the retelling of stories?MethodsWe assessed 28 elderly participants: 17 with probable AD and 11 control subjects, with schooling ≥4 years. The textual reading comprehension was measured using four stories with descriptive and narrative textual structure. The lexical production was verified by 17 actions on video, assessed by the participants' first and second verbal emissions.ResultsThe results showed that the retelling of stories is a task that discriminates patients with AD from healthy individuals. The naming and reformulation of actions tasks did not show significant differences among the patients and their controls. A positive correlation was found between the difficulties in retelling stories and the reformulation of the naming of actions.ConclusionsThese results confirm previous findings that show the preservation of naming actions in patients with AD, which involve familiar actions, and that the retelling of short stories is an instrument that discriminates patients with AD from healthy elders. Results also suggest that the difficulties in retelling are related a breakdown in reformulating information, perhaps stemming from mechanisms of decreased memory work.

Background: Social interaction is a lifestyle factor associated with a decreased risk of dementia in several studies. However, specific aspects of these social factors influencing dementia are unknown. This study aimed at evaluating the role of the distinct aspects of social support on the incidence of dementia in acommunity-based cohort of older people in Brazil. Methods: A total of 345 healthy and independent elderly subjects living in the community were followed by 12 years. Incident cases of dementia and probable Alzheimer's disease were defined by DSM-IV criteria and NINCDS-ADRDA criteria, respectively. Social variables evaluated were marital status, living arrangement, living children, living sibling, confidant and attending recreational groups. Sex, age, education, Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score, depressive symptoms and family income were entered as co-variates in a Cox proportional hazard model. Results: The absence of confidant was the only social variable associated to higher risk of developing dementia (HR = 5.31; p < 0.001), even after adjustment for age (HR = 1.08; p = 0.048) and baseline MMSE score (HR = 0.79; p = 0.002). Conclusions: Our data suggest that to have a confidant could be an important lifestyle factor associated with dementia.

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Resumo: As habilidades lingüísticas formais são relacionadas ao papel do hemisfério cerebral esquerdo, enquanto as habilidades funcionais são ligadas predominantemente à ativação do hemisfério direito. A função linguagem no envelhecimento tem sido freqüentemente estudada. No entanto, encontram-se na literatura, geralmente, pesquisas sobre os aspectos lingüísticos formais em adultos idosos, sendo os funcionais ainda pouco investigados. O objetivo do presente estudo foi averiguar se o envelhecimento influencia no desempenho comunicativo associado ao hemisfério direito. Participaram da pesquisa 40 adultos jovens e 40 adultos idosos, de ambos os sexos, com escolaridade igual ou superior a oito anos de estudo, sem relato de quaisquer patologias sensoriais, neurológicas ou psiquiátricas. Foram incluídos indivíduos com escore no Mini Exame do Estado Mental superior a 23 pontos (adultos idosos) e ausência de depressão na Escala de Depressão Yesavage. O desempenho comunicativo foi examinado através da Bateria Montreal de Avaliação da Comunicação, versão Brasileira do instrumento canadense Protocole Montréal d’Évaluation de la Communication — tarefas de interpretação de metáforas, interpretação de atos de fala indiretos, evocação lexical, julgamento semântico e compreensão e produção prosódicas. A análise estatística dos dados foi realizada com o Teste t de Student. Os idosos apresentaram um desempenho significativamente inferior ao dos jovens na maioria das tarefas lingüísticas, com exceção da interpretação de atos de fala indiretos, prosódia lingüística — repetição e do julgamento semântico. A maior dificuldade de processamento comunicativo observada nos idosos não representou um deficit lingüístico, mas sim um efeito de idade no seu estilo comunicativo ou mudanças pragmáticas. Palavras-chave: Comunicação. Linguagem. Hemisfério Direito. Envelhecimento. Abstract: Structural linguistic abilities are more related to the left hemisphere’s role, while functional linguistic abilities are linked to the right hemisphere’s activity. Language in the elderly adults has been frequently investigated. In the literature, however, there are researches mainly focused on structural linguistic aspects in the aged population and the functional aspects are still less explored. This study aimed to verify if aging influences on communicative performance related to the right hemisphere. Two groups formed the sample: 1) 40 young adults and 2) 40 elderly adults. Participants should have eight or more years of formal education, without self-report of any sensorial, neurological or psychiatric disorders. In addition, the inclusion factors were performance in the Mini-Mental State Examination superior to 23 points (elderly adults), absence of depression in the Yesavage Depression Scale. The communicative performance was assessed with the Brazilian version of the Canadian instrument Protocole Montréal d’Évaluation de la Communication (Montreal Communication Evaluation Battery) — methaphor interpretation, indirect speech acts interpretation, verbal fluency, semantic judgement and prosody tasks. The data were analyzed through a Student t Test. Elderly adults showed a significant inferior performance in the majority of the communicative tasks, except for indirect speech acts interpretation, linguistic prosody — repetition and semantic judgement. The main difficulty in the communication processing observed in the elderly group did not mean a linguistic deficit; it suggested, however, an aging effect on their communicative profile or pragmatic changes. Keywords: Communication. Language. Right Hemisphere. Aging.