SERVICES
_
Carolina Cognition Center specializes in neuropsychological assessment and diagnosis of cognitive concerns.
Cognitive Screenings
A snapshot of your cognitive health.
Curious about your cognitive functioning, but not sure you need an in-depth evaluation? A cognitive screening is a great place to start.
Perhaps you had concussions in your youth and want to know if they caused lingering memory loss? Maybe you just turned 40 and want a brain health checkup? Or perhaps you feel your brain is doing great, but you just had a sibling diagnosed with dementia? In all of these cases and more, cognitive screening is a valuable resource.
You'll complete a clinical interview and approximately 45 minutes of cognitive testing. Dr. Hurley will provide scores on five neurocognitive domains - attention, immediate memory, delayed memory, language, and visuospatial processing.
Cognitive screenings are considerably shorter than a full baseline evaluation, but can be used to evaluate the need for more comprehensive services.
Baseline Evaluations
Establish a complete cognitive profile.
For many people, occasional mental lapses result in worries about their cognitive functioning. For others, there are questions about how mental health affects overall cognitive and psychiatric well-being. Whether you have a family history of dementia or simply want to know if it's normal to misplace your car keys, a baseline evaluation will get you answers about the current status of your brain's functioning.
A complete baseline documents your functioning in all the major cognitive domains - attention, learning and memory, executive functioning (e.g., processing speed, multi-tasking, problem solving), language, motor performance, visuospatial functioning, and psychiatric functioning. Baseline evaluations offer our most comprehensive assessment of your neuropsychological functioning.
Repeat/Follow-up Evaluations
Tracking brain changes through the years.
Previously completed an evaluation? Then you've taken an important step toward tracking your brain's health over time. Repeat/follow-up evaluations are the best way to monitor normal cognitive aging versus atypical cognitive decline. Many people with a family history of dementia choose to monitor their cognition with a yearly evaluation.
Repeat evaluations seek to compare and contrast cognitive scores while accounting for typical, age-related cognitive changes. While every cognitive domain is tested, special emphasis is given to any areas of cognitive weakness identified in prior evaluations.
Repeat evaluations help people and their medical teams make important decisions on topics such as initiating medication, changes to daily living, driving safety, financial management, and decision-making capacity.
Dementia Evaluations
When cognitive changes affect daily living.
Have you noticed difficulties with financial management, medication management, or cooking safety? Perhaps you're worried about an elderly parent's ability to continue residing independently? Maybe family members agree that a loved one's thinking abilities have declined, but they can't agree if it's simply aging or dementia? If so, a dementia evaluation is the right choice.
Dementia evaluations explore the main criteria of a dementia diagnosis - cognitive impairment with functional impairment. While Dr. Hurley will assess all the primary cognitive functions, he'll also incorporate tests of reasoning and decision-making capabilities. This is particularly important in such cases, as individuals with dementia often lose their insight (i.e., the ability to recognize one's own cognitive or functional declines) as time passes.
