Class_01_Introduction to Cognitive Assessment Flashcards
Week 1
Cambridge Dictionary Definition of Cognition
The use of conscious mental processes
Origin of the Word Cognition in Latin
- com (meaning with)
- gnoscere (meaning to know)
Definition of Cognition by Richard Byrne
All the activities and processes concerned with the
- ACQUISITION
- STORAGE
- RETRIEVAL
- PROCESSING
of information regardless of whether these processes are explicit or conscious
Alan Turing on Computer Science and Cognition
The attempt to make a thinking machine will help us greatly in finding out how we think ourselves
George Miller on Human Memory
Memory storage capacity and information processing is limited to 7 items
6 Core Fields of Cognitive Science
- Philosophy
- Linguistics
- Anthropology
- Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Computer Science
Minimal Conditions Needed for Cognition
- Machines that lack any information ‘processer’ -> walk
- Ants -> complex behaviors
- Amoebas -> maze
- Kidney cells -> learn/change
Reasons for Cognitive Assessment
- Identification of cognitive disorders
- Monitoring treatment cognitive side-effects
- Measuring premorbid ability
- Assessment during awake brain surgery
- Differential diagnosis
“a-“
Without
- a severe loss of ability
- preferred by medical doctors
“dys-“ or “dis-“
an impairment without complete loss
- preferred by educational psychologists
Monitoring Treatment Cognitive Side-effects
Medical treatment of the brain will result in changes to cognition
- e.g. electroconvulsive therapy
(ECT) for severe depression -> transient disorientation and memory problems
Measuring Premorbid Ability
to estimate person’s potential, to be able to know if they are impaired
Assessment during Awake Brain surgery
neuropsychologist can check the patients cognitive and motor skill impairments caused by the surgery as soon as possible
Differential Diagnosis
symptoms, observed behavior, and cognitive ability are used to decide between different possible diagnoses
- e.g. distinguish between different types of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s or frontotemporal dementia
Lesion-symptom Association
Identify the which parts of the brain support which cognitive functions
Broca’s area
Left frontal lobe
- aphasia
Voxel-based Lesion-Symptom Mapping (VLSM)
- collect data on many patients with
varying brain lesions - damaged and not damaged voxels in each brain can be identified
Homotopic Organization
Brain symmetric organization
- Neurons connect the same areas on the left and right hemispheres of the cerebrum, via the corpus collosum
3 Corpus Callosum Parts
Start from anterior to posterior
1. Genu (knee)
2. Main body
3. Splenium
How does cognitive assessment has advantages over modern imaging methods?
- Impairments following LESIONS can be directly understand as subtractions from cognitive models
- Cognitive assessment gives more information about TYPE of processes involved
- Cognitive studies can reveal SURPPRISING results, that would not have been hypothesized
- e.g. attentional neglect on the left side of objects - Single changes in BEHAVIOR, e.g., strategy application can be noted in cognitive assessment
Bedside testing
- Only limited TRAINING needed to administer
- EASILY interpretable results
- SIMPLE materials
- SHORT-administration time
- Can be completed in BUSY environments
A clinical ‘bedside version’ of “Go/No-go” task
A measure of motor impulse control
- neurologist taps under the desk, once or twice
The most famous and widely used bedside tests
- Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE)
- Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)
No such thing as a neuropsychological test
- INCORRECT: the results of the cognitive test indicate the cognitive impairment
+ relatively low performance on such tasks could be for many reasons that we don’t understand - CORRECT: Only the method of drawing inferences about the tests is neuropsychological
Cognitive assessment in educational and vocational settings
- Identify students that may have difficulties in general, or students that are ‘gifted’
- General cognitive ability (e.g., IQ) is often seen as being predictive of workplace performance
