Neupsy Key

This chapter discusses scales and inventories for mental status assessment. Scales are instruments for measuring or grading mental status attributes, and inventories are questionnaires for surveying or cataloging mental status…

Heads___1 hd Mental status testing, or the evaluation of cognition in the clinic and at the bedside, is among the most useful examination techniques in a clinician’s tool bag. It…

Executive operations refer to cognitive processes that underlie goal-directed behavior, and executive attributes refer to decision-making abilities such as abstraction, judgment, and problem solving. They are what a chief executive…

Constructional, perceptual, and spatial abilities are important, interrelated brain functions. This chapter discusses these abilities primarily in the visual modality; however, the principles and concepts apply to auditory and other…

The ability to appreciate quantities, understand numbers, and calculate is a cognitive domain in its own right. This domain has a left inferior parietal hub involving the horizontal portion of…

Clinicians have applied the term “praxis,” and its disorder, “apraxia,” to a wide number of conditions involving impaired motor performance. A strict and specific use of the term “apraxia” (or…

Memory is the process of encoding, storing, and retrieving information in the brain. There are many aspects of memory. This chapter is concerned with examining the most clinically important aspects…

Fundamental functions, or disturbances of the “sensorium,” are a prerequisite to instrumental functions. They include arousal, basic attention, “mental control,” and psychomotor speed. The multimodal aspect of orientation to time…

Language is the usual “medium” for communication during mental status assessment. Like fundamental functions, the examiner must assess language early as disturbances can affect the rest of the examination. The…