PSY 442 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Dementia, Intellectual Disability, Neuropsychological Assessment
29 Jul 2020
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Document Summary
The action of the neuropsychologist may be requested for the purpose of evaluation, assessment and diagnosis of higher psychological functions and the affective-behavioral state. The objective is to know if the patient has any problem and, therefore, the cause and its implications. More specifically, the purpose of the evaluation may be to detect and locate brain lesions. Another objective of the neuropsychological evaluation may be to carry out differential diagnoses . This, that is, to discriminate if the alterations have an organic basis, or instead, are functional. An example would be the differential diagnosis of depression / dementia. The neuropsychological assessment process is also useful for studying and detecting simulation cases in court proceedings . The reason is that sometimes there can be doubt about the veracity of the affectation and / or the exaggeration of the possible alterations. Another application of neuropsychological evaluation in the judicial field is the performance of forensic neuropsychological examinations .
