Dementia’ encompasses a variety of disorders involving impaired cognition including memory, language, praxis, visuospatial and perceptual function and executive functions such as planning, organising and sequencing.
Although there is increasing evidence for the effectiveness of cognition-based psychological interventions in dementia, little is known about which neuropsychological domains are more amenable to change.
The development of psychological cognitive interventions for dementia was originally stimulated by evidence from the neuroscience literature. This suggested that the adult brain retains significant neuronal plasticity and therefore has the capacity for regeneration and compensation.
For Cognitive Stimulation, there was good evidence for general cognitive enhancement, more specifically in language and memory.