Cognitive impairments in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases

This chapter discusses some of the neurocognitive deficits experienced in the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) conditions, with the primary focus on different stages of dementia due to AD. It discusses the cognitive functions affected during the natural course of AD and other neurodegenerative diseases. The chapter discusses the most common neurocognitive features of AD as well as other common types of dementias. Attention and working memory deficits are commonly seen in AD patients. Following the amnestic phase of AD, attention is the second cognitive function to be affected, long before difficulties with other cognitive functions including language and praxis. There is a gradual major shift in cognitive and clinical examination, using online and computerised measures. The traditional neuropsychological approach of ‘in-person’ testing should adapt and make use of such an unprecedented approach that can bring big-data available for clinical practice, establishing psychometric basis of the available measures, and providing an avenue to develop new measures.