Functional cognitive disorders, there’s not a standard sort of cast iron definition of them, but they’re usually defined as patients complaining of cognitive symptoms, they’re causing them some distress, but they’re not readily explained by any medical or neurological condition. And there’s usually some features of them, such as inconsistency, which seems to set them apart from neurological disorders...
Functional cognitive disorders, there’s not a standard sort of cast iron definition of them, but they’re usually defined as patients complaining of cognitive symptoms, they’re causing them some distress, but they’re not readily explained by any medical or neurological condition. And there’s usually some features of them, such as inconsistency, which seems to set them apart from neurological disorders. So generally, as I said, used to consider those patients who are complaining often of memory symptoms, but it could be other cognitive symptoms as well, quite disabling for them, but there’s no obvious medical cause for them and they can’t be explained by a psychiatric condition or things like that and there are features which seem to set them apart from neurological disorders.
The functional cognitive disorders, they can have a number of features. First of all, there may be what’s called comorbid conditions. So there may be things like fatigue problems, sleep problems, pain, headache, things like that, and obviously anxiety and mood. There may have been some stressful events etc. So one’s looking at the presence of comorbid features. Then there may be what’s called attentional problems, they’re really paying lots of attention, hypervigilant to their symptoms. And they may have what’s called health anxiety as well, they may have beliefs that they may be getting dementia and things like that. So they may have strong beliefs that they’ve got a particular type of illness. So, those are some of the clinical features. They will often describe their symptoms in great detail. That’s often indicated as one of the features. And there may be a sudden onset and that may set them apart. So, those are some of the clinical features and, in terms of neuropsychological functioning, I think one of the characteristics is that they’re often performing well on neuropsychological tests, and that sets them apart from patients with organic conditions. They may have 1 or 2 impairments, but they’re generally fairly mild, and they may be on speed of processing tests and things like that. So those are the sorts of things which tends to set them apart.
