Neuropsychological assessment of dementia

Dementia is a fundamentally neuropsychological concept, describing the unravelling of the mind due to a brain disorder: neuro plus psychological. e disabling cognitive and behavioural impacts of dementia are typically preceded by gradually emerging signs of cognitive change, providing the rst inkling that something is not quite right. A brief cognitive screening test by a geriatrician or neurologist may be enlightening, but if the signs are subtle a referral for comprehensive neuropsychological testing should be made. e emergence of clinical neuropsychology as a mainstream specialty discipline in hospital outpatient clinics (e.g. socalled ‘memory clinics’) has allowed for the quantitative evaluation of cognitive decline with the kind of metric resolution which healthcare professionals might reasonably expect of an empirical investigation.