Clinical Assessment of Dementia

1. Overview: The Neuroanatomy of Cognition Assessment of dementia requires a set of skills and knowledge that span several clinical domains. The clinician should be familiar with normal aging, brain anatomy, brain pathology that produces dementia and common disorders that mimic dementia. Clinicians should combine basic clinical evaluation skills with other disease-specific assessments to provide accurate high-quality dementia assessments. The symptoms of dementia re divided into cognitive, functional, and psychiatric. Cognitive symptoms include intellectual deficits such as amnesia or aphasia. Functional impairments include inability to perform common activities of daily living (ADLs) while psychiatric manifestations include behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD).