Dementia Research Centre
Queen Square, London
Neuropsychology
The work of the neuropsychology team within the Dementia Research Centre is directed towards identifying, measuring, monitoring and understanding the cognitive changes associated with degenerative disease and normal ageing. The term "cognition" refers to all processes by which information from our senses is transformed, stored, recovered, and used. So in our work, we are interested in assessing the impact of degenerative diseases upon a wide variety of human skills and behaviours, including memory, conceptual knowledge, language, literacy, perception, and thinking. Our research takes various forms:
Longitudinal group studies
In collaboration with other colleagues within and outside the DRC, the neuropsychology team are involved in measuring how the cognitive abilities of individuals with a particular diagnosis alter or are maintained over time, and how those abilities are similar to or different from individuals with other conditions or healthy age-matched research volunteers. Such studies typically involve yearly or twice yearly neuropsychological assessments.
Experimental group studies
These studies compare directly the abilities of two or more groups of research participants in order to answer a specific clinical or scientific question, e.g. How common and severe are reading problems in individuals with Alzheimer's disease? What can the word finding difficulties of individuals with vascular dementia tell us about the organisation of conceptual knowledge in the healthy brain?
Single patient work
Many research projects involve recruiting participants to help answer a pre-defined question. By contrast, single patient work involves examining the pattern of preserved and impaired skills reported by an individual patient in great detail, in an effort to explain previously unseen or poorly understood symptoms and difficulties. In this sense, such single patient investigations are person-centred rather than hypothesis-driven.
Normative investigations
A vital component of the neuropsychological research undertaken at the Dementia Research Centre is the participation of healthy volunteers. Such individuals provide an important comparison population for many of our longitudinal and experimental group studies. Healthy control subjects are also involved in the standardisation of new diagnostic tests, because it is very difficult to evaluate what level of performance might be indicative of dementia without establishing how difficult individuals without dementia find a given task.
Neuropsychology tests
All rights, including copyright, in the content and design of these tests ("the material"), as developed by the Dementia Research Centre of University College London's Institute of Neurology, are owned or controlled for these purposes by University College London (UCL). The material may be reproduced, distributed or communicated to others free of charge in any format or media for the purposes of research for a non-commercial or academic purpose. This is subject to the material being reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context. Any other proposed use will be subject to agreement by UCL. Where the material is being reproduced, distributed or communicated to others, the source of the material must be identified and the copyright status acknowledged.
Please click here for two category-specific tests for naming and comprehension
+44 (0)20 3448 4773 - Fax +44 (0)20 3448 3104 - Copyright
© 1999-2011 UCL
