parentheses - Lowercase Letter in Brackets

Please look at the following sentence with the bracketed lowercase letter.

“Doctor Rogers' thesis states that ‘[p]atients often display psychosomatic symptoms.’ ” Is the author decapitalizing the word "patients" that may have appeared in the original, and he or she is denoting this via use of the brackets around the letter "p"? In your opinion, did the original appear like this (see below) with the unnecessary capitalization of the word "patients"?

“Doctor Rogers' thesis states that ‘Patients often display psychosomatic symptoms.’ ”

Thank you.

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