Cognitive Rehabilitation of Memory. A Clinical-Neuropsychological Introduction

Table of Contents

I. Evidence-based medicine in rehabilitation research 1. Introduction 2. Strategies of neurorehabilitation: restitution and compensation 3. Definition of evidence-based medicine (EBM) 4. Reviewing and the development of guidelines 5. Guidelines for treating patients 6. How to measure treatment effects ("outcome")? 7. How to rate neuropsychological assessments as outcome measures 8. Level of evidence 9. The Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) as "gold-standard" in rehabilitation research 10. Some basic aspects of statistical analysis of treatment studies 11. Problems with group studies in neuropsychological rehabilitation research 12. Single case experimental designs (SCED) in rehabilitation research 13. The quality of a treatment study does not only depend on a sound methodology

II. Rehabilitation of moderately to mildly impaired memory functions 1. Some remarks on the frequency (prevalence) and persistence of memory disorders as consequence of organic brain diseases 2. Rehabilitation of memory: Improving encoding through mnemonic strategies 3. Memory rehabilitation as improving the encoding process through multiple, adaptive mnemonic strategies 4. Deep encoding and transfer appropriate processing and memory rehabilitation 5. Improving memory performance through working memory training 6 Is it possible to improve recollection? The repetition lag procedure 7. Memory rehabilitation focusing on retrieval training 8. Specific guidelines for rehabilitation of mildly to moderately memory impaired patients

III. Compensation of memory disorders through external memory aids 1. Spontaneous use of memory aids 2. Group studies on teaching external aids to memory impaired patients 3. A classification of memory aids and to what kind of patients they fit

IV. Treatment of severely impaired, amnestic patients 1. Some etiological, epidemiological and defining background information 2. Treatment options 3. Orientation training 4. Treating confabulations

V. Non-cognitive treatments of memory impairments 1. Transcranial direct current stimulation 2. Neurofeedback

Authors

Helmut Hildebrandt Department of Neurology, Hospital Bremen-Ost, Germany. Dr. Helmut Hildebrandt is currently a clinical neuropsychologist in the Department of Neurology at the Hospital Bremen-Ost. Dr. Hildebrandt's clinical work focuses on the rehabilitation of patients with severe cognitive disorders at the early neurological rehabilitation unit and the assessment of patients with neurodegenerative diseases. He also teaches courses on clinical neuropsychology and rehabilitation at the University of Oldenburg and conducts clinical studies with different rehabilitation units in Bremen, Oldenburg, Wilhelmshaven, and Bonn. Furthermore, Dr. Hildebrandt conducts research on the rehabilitation of memory and neurological neglect. He is a former member of the scientific advisory board of the German neuropsychological society (GNP). For the last 10 years, Dr. Hildebrandt has been involved in the development of most of Germany's guidelines concerning neuropsychological assessment and rehabilitation.