Cognitive Assessment for Clinicians - Professor John R Hodges

This handbook of cognitive assessment for clinicians is aimed primarily at neurologists and psychiatrists in training who require a practical guide to assessing the higher mental functions in the clinic or at the bedside, and will also be of interest to clinical psychologists. It begins by presenting the theoretical basis of cognitive testing with an overview of cognitive functions, divided into those with a distributed or a localized neural basis. There is a description of all the common neuropsychological syndromes including delirium, dementia, amnesia, aphasia, agnosia, and neglect. There have been enormous advances over the last decade in our understanding of the cognitive functions, particularly memory and language, but these have not been made accessible to clinicians. The author, a practicing behavioral neurologist with an extensive research background, incorporates these advances in theory and provides a practical approach to bedside cognitive testing with some tips on physical examination. There are 12 case histories to illustrate the advocated approach. Standardized mental test schedules, such and the Mini-Mental State Examination, are discussed and there is an appendix which describes commonly used neuropsychological tests.