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Resumo Batuko, gênero músico-coreográfico de Cabo Verde – país localizado na costa ocidental africana, criado pelos africanos negros escravizados, após a independência do país em 1975 – passou por um processo de revalorização e vem sendo visto pelas batukadeiras como possibilidade de se tornar um projeto profissional. Neste artigo, viso reconstruir as múltiplas dinâmicas sociopolíticas do batuko entrecruzadas com dois momentos socio-históricos e políticos da historiografia oficial de Cabo Verde, tendo como material as narrativas e trechos de vivências das batukadeiras do coletivo de São Martinho Grande, resultantes de pesquisa etnográfica realizada em 2008. O primeiro momento se centra no período pós-colonial, após a independência de Cabo Verde em 1975. E, o segundo, no período pós-abertura política com a democratização do sistema político-partidário a partir de 1991 e, com isso, a criação de bases para a revalorização e circulação das artes musicais tidas como tradicionais. Sinalizo que as narrativas das minhas interlocutoras permitem perceber não só o efeito das narrativas hegemônicas de conformação da identidade da nação nas suas vivências do batuko, mas também os efeitos nos modos como se inscrevem como mulheres batukadeiras e almejam o projeto profissional: vir a ser artistas profissionais.

The global increase in the rate of premature birth is of great concern since it is associated with an increase in a wide spectrum of neurologic and cognitive disorders. Neuroimaging analyses have been focused on white matter alterations in preterm subjects and findings have linked neurodevelopment impairment to white matter damage linked to premature birth. However, the trajectory of brain development into childhood and adolescence is less well described. Neuroimaging studies of extremely preterm born subjects in their adulthood are now available to investigate the long-term structural alterations of disrupted neurodevelopment. In this paper, we examine white matter pathways in the preterm adolescent brain by combining state-of-the-art diffusion techniques with graph theory and principal component analysis (PCA). Our results suggest that the pattern of connectivity is altered and differences in connectivity patterns result in more vulnerable premature brain network.

The thalamus is a deep grey matter structure that plays an important role in propagating nerve impulses between subcortical regions and the cerebral cortex. It is composed of distinct nuclei that have unique long-range connectivity. Accurate thalamic nuclei segmentation provides insights about structural connectivity and the neurodegeneration mechanisms occurring in distinct brain disorders, for instance Alzheimer’s disease and Frontotemporal dementia (FTD). In this work, we propose a novel thalamic nuclei segmentation approach that relies on tractography, thalamic nuclei priors and local fibre orientation. Validation was performed in a cohort of healthy controls and FTD patients against other thalamus connectivity-based parcellation methods. Results showed that the proposed strategy led to anatomical plausible thalamic nuclei segmentations and was able to detect connectivity differences between controls and FTD patients.

Most neurodegenerative diseases are caused by pathogenic proteins. Pathogenic protein behaviour is governed by neurobiological mechanisms which cause them to spread and accumulate in the brain, leading to cellular death and eventually atrophy. Patient data suggests atrophy loosely follows a number of spatiotemporal patterns, with different patterns associated with each neurodegenerative disease variant. It is hypothesised that the behaviour of different pathogenic protein variants is governed by different mechanisms, which could explain the pattern variety. Machine learning approaches take advantage of the pattern predictability for differential diagnosis and prognosis, but are unable to reveal new information on the underlying mechanisms, which are still poorly understood. We propose a framework where computational models of these mechanisms were created based on neurobiological literature. Competing hypotheses regarding the mechanisms were modelled and the outcomes evaluated against empirical data of Alzheimer’s disease. With this approach, we are able to characterise the impact of each mechanism on the neurodegenerative process. We also demonstrate how our framework could evaluate candidate therapies.