Neuropsychological assessment

Neuropsychological assessment was traditionally carried out to assess the extent of impairment to a particular skill and to attempt to locate an area of the brain which may have been damaged after brain injury or neurological illness. With the advent of neuroimaging techniques, location of brain damage can now be accurately determined so the focus has now moved onto the measurement of cognition and behaviour, including examining the effects of any brain injury or neuropathological process that a person may have experienced. A core part of neuropsychological assessment is the administration of neuropsychological tests for the formal assessment of cognitive functioning. Aspects of cognitive functioning that are assessed typically include orientation, new-learning/memory, intelligence, language, visuoperception, and executive-control/self-awareness. However, clinical neuropsychological assessment is more than this and encompasses a focus also on a person's psychological, personal, interpersonal and wider contextual circumstances.

Assessment may be carried for a variey of reasons, such as:
 * Clinical evaluation, to understand the pattern of cognitive strengths as well as any difficulties a person may have, and to aid decision making for use in a medical or rehabilitation environment.
 * Scientific investigation, to examine an hypothesis about the structure and function of cognition to be tested, or to provide information that allows experimental testing to be seen in context of a wider cognitive profile.
 * Medico-legal assessment, to be used in a court of law as evidence in a legal claim or criminal investigation.

Miller1 outlined three broad goals of neuropsychological assessment. Firstly, diagnosis, to determine the nature of the underlying problem. Secondly, to understand the nature of any brain injury or resulting cognitive problem (see neurocognitive deficit) and its impact on the individual, as a means of devising a rehabilitation programme or offering advice as to an individual's ability to carry out a certain tasks (for example, fitness to drive, or returning to work). And lastly, assessments may be undertaken to measure change in functioning over time, such as to determine the consequences of a surgical procedure or the impact of a rehabilitation programme over time.