Personality / Mental Status

This part of the evaluation determines the extent that personality, depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric conditions are affecting patients' cognitive status and overall functioning.

Functioning

A functional assessment is part of every evaluation, which involves determining patients' ability to manage tasks and activities that are necessary in day-to-day life.

Attention

Attention is the ability to focus awareness on a given stimulus or task, concentrate on it long enough to accomplish the desired goal, and to shift awareness if needed. Attention is necessary to store memories and is highly affected by energy level (alert vs. drowsy). Overall attention and concentration is diffusely distributed across the brain, but divided attention is centered in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Executive Functioning

Executive functioning refers to the ability to use complex cognitive abilities to control behaviors that are needed to get something done, such as paying bills. Executive functions include, but are not limited to, attention, working memory, planning, decision making, responding to feedback, correcting errors, inhibiting thoughts and behaviors, and mental flexibility. Executive functioning is controlled mostly by the frontal cortex.

Learning and Memory

Memory is the ability to store, consolidate, and retrieve information. Different types of memory include sensory memory (< 1 second), Short-term/Working memory (< 1 minute), and Long-term memory (life-time). Long-term memory is divided into Declarative Memory (e.g, facts, events, experiences, concepts), which is conscious, and Procedural Memory (e.g., skills, tasks), which is unconscious. Memory functions are influenced by the basal forebrain, medial temporal lobe memory areas, and the medial diencephalic memory areas.

Language Abilities

Language abilities are broadly divided into oral, written, comprehension, expression, and word-finding ability. Verbal expression is centered in Broca's area (left inferior frontal gyrus; end of motor strip). Comprehension is centered in Wernicke's area (left posterior superior temporal gyrus).

Perceptual-Motor Skills

Perceptual-motor skills refer to the interaction and integration of perception and purposeful movement. Visual perception refers to how accurately stimuli are perceived. Visuo-construction refers to the hand-eye coordination that is required in tasks, such as when drawing.

Social Cognition

Social cognition is the cognitive capacity to process social information. It refers to the ability to recognize emotions and to consider another person's thoughts, desires, intentions, and experiences (i.e., theory of mind) and to use social reasoning.

Other Areas

Because each evaluation is tailored to the person and the referral question, other areas may also be assessed. Common domains that are also assessed include intellectual functioning and academic achievement.