الفهرس 
الملخص العربي
Clinieal implications and recommendationsOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The term cognition refers to the highest levels of various mental processes and systems which allow us to perform day-to-day functions in a real world. Cognition is considered an abstract property of advanced living organisms and is studied as a direct property of a brain (or of an abstract mind) (Lycan et al, 1999).
Recently most neuropsychological assessment models require the independent evaluation of 6 specific areas of cognition (domains of cognition): 1) attention, 2) perceptual functions (visual, auditory and tactile), 3) verbal and language functions, 4) spatial/constructural processing abilities, 5) memory and learning, and 6) executive functions (conceptual reasoning, problem solving, planning, flexibility in cognitive strategies and implementing cognitive plans.
Attention is the gateway to the rest of cognition (Rothbart et al, 1995). Attention includes being awake and receptive to incoming stimuli, presetting oneself to attend to selected information, concentrating on a focus of attention, maintaining/sustaining attention: maintaining a focus of attention over time, actively avoiding attention to competing stimuli or information, changing or shifting the focus of attention from one thing to another, actively paying attention to more than one source of information at one time. Perception is a central step in the processing of sensory/attentional information. Perceptual functions include activities such as awareness, recognition, discrimination, patterning and orientation (Lezak, 1995). Memory and learning encomprass 3 aspects: encoding (i.e., putting the memory into ones head or knowledge base); storage (holding the memory there over time); and retrieval which is the act of remembering something that was previously learned or experienced (Atkinson et al, 1968). Memory is classified into two broad categories: a) Declarative (explicit, deliberate, effortful, strategic) memory which means all the memories that can be recovered voluntary. Declarative memory includes: i) immediate memory which lasts just milliseconds and allows you to memorize rapidly things like a phone number. Immediate memory is concerned with moment to moment handling of information for transfer to another system (Schater et al, 1994; Chelune et al, 1999), ii) Short-term (working) memory which is a temporary easy accessible storing of information in consciousness and that act on that information, discriminate between important and unimportant information, to organize the information, and the like which is useful in a particular activity, like the shopping list (Luria, 1980), and iii) Long-term memory: includes episodic memory which is concerned with memory of events that occurred at a specific time and place (Squire et al, 1993) and semantic memory which refers to the memory of meanings, understandings, and other concept-based knowledge unrelated to specific experiences (Luria, 1980). Semantic memory is concerned with information poorly defined by temporospatial context, including language and rules world. b) Non-declarative (procedural or implicit or reflexive) memory which means remembering how to do something or implicit memory (possessing a memory trace, but no sense that one has the memory) (Squire et al, 1992; Schater et al, 1995). Executive functioning includes those control and regulatory processes that integrate information perceived in the external world and transform perception into higher-order symbols, compare incoming information with what knowledge stored in memory, combine the incoming perceptions with information about the person’s internal physiological state and biological drives. According to this terminology, executive functioning is arguably the most complex aspect of one’s cognitive capacities, due to the variety of functions required to select, plan, organize and implement a behavioral response appropriate to a constantly changing world (Ettlin et al, 1999). Brown et al. (2010) breaks executive functions down into six different clusters: 1) organizing, prioritizing and activating for tasks, 2) focusing, sustaining and shifting attention to task, 3) regulating alertness, sustaining effort and processing speed, 4) managing frustration and modulating emotions, 5) utilizing working memory and accessing recall, and 6) monitoring and self-regulating action.
The clinical neuropsychological evaluation plays important roles in detecting and characterizing patients’ cognitive strengths and weaknesses. By examining performance on standardized tasks, clinicians may use neuropsychological data to help assess how individuals may be expected to perform in occupational or psychosocial settings (Weiner et al, 2003). The past and present context of a person’s life influences the interpretation of neurocognitive evaluation results. The availability of external sources of information is important in corroborating information gathered during a patient interview. Many tests and measures of cognitive functioning have been developed, and many of the more popular tools in clinical use are summarized in texts such as those by Lezak (1995), Snyder and Nussbaum (1998), and Spreen and Strauss (1998). Cognitive domains assessed in the neuropsychological evaluation include intellectual ability and global cognitive status, attention and concentration, executive functions, memory, visuospatial functioning, language, and motor abilities.