The Mindstreams® Mild Impairment Tests require patient interaction with the computer and provide normatively based and raw score results for each patient. Read below to see how the Mindstreams® Mild Impairment Tests will help you understand the daily challenges a patient is or may soon be facing.

• Memory

• Brain Areas Involved: Temporal and frontal lobes.
• Affected Abilities: Acquiring new information, storing it, and retrieving it.
• Problems with memory can lead to: Difficulty in learning new information, and difficulty retrieving information.
• MindStreams® Areas of Focus: Both verbal and non-verbal memory tests that measure ability to memorize words and pictures, and recall memories both immediate and delayed.
• MindStreams® Tests: Verbal Memory Test (immediate and delayed verbal memory for verbal pair associates) and Non-Verbal Memory Test (immediate and delayed verbal memory for orientation of simple geometric patterns and symbols).
  
  

• Executive Function

• Brain Areas Involved: Frontal Lobes.
• Affected Abilities: Executive functions impacts how we function in a complex world.
• Problems with executive function can lead to: Poor organization, difficulty in decision making, difficulties in prioritization of things to do, difficulties in completing multi-step tasks, poor judgment, poor problem solving ability.
• MindStreams® Areas of Focus: Problem solving, ability to pay attention to important stimuli and avoid unimportant stimuli, ability to solve puzzles, planning a course of action organization, ability to shift efficiently from one task to the next task, sequencing and prioritization, judgment, abstract reasoning, analytical skills and working memory.
• MindStreams® Tests: GoNoGo Response Inhibition Test (ability to pay attention to important stimuli and avoid unimportant stimuli) Problem Solving (ability to solve puzzles), Stroop Interference Test (ability to shift efficiently from one task to the next task and to prioritize between tasks), Catch Game Test (ability to plan a course of action organization) and Problem Solving Test (ability to appreciate spatial relationships among geometric forms that constitute a pattern).
  
  

• Attention

• Brain Areas Involved: All brain regions.
• Affected Abilities: Impacts ability to maintain focus as long as necessary to focus on a relevant function.
• Problems with attention can lead to: Distractability, decreased ability to focus on important tasks, problems with multi-tasking, loss of interest in finishing a task, poor organization, and impulsivity.
• MindStreams® Areas of Focus: ability to stay focused, ignore irrelevant stimuli and maintain the same level of effort throughout the task.
• MindStreams® tests: GoNoGo Response Inhibition Test (ability to stay focused, ignore irrelevant stimuli and maintain the same level of effort throughout the task).
  
  

• Visual Spatial Perception

• Brain Areas Involved: Parietal and Occipital Lobes.
• Affected Abilities: Visual Spatial Perception impacts ability to drive, navigate in the environment, and perform daily tasks.
• Problems with visual spatial perception can lead to: Difficulty following travel directions, difficulty reading maps, difficulty navigating streets, and unsafe driving.
• MindStreams® Areas of Focus: Block design, 3-D drawing, visual spatial with mental rotation of stationary objects.
• MindStreams® Tests: Visual Spatial Processing Test (visual spatial with mental rotation of stationary objects).
  
  

• Verbal Function

• Brain Areas Involved: Frontal and temporal lobes.
• Affected Abilities: Impacts overall ability to communicate
• Problems with verbal function can lead to: Decreased spontaneous speech, word finding difficulty, difficulty in comprehension, difficulty in naming objects or people, overall problem with communication
• MindStreams® Areas of Focus: Ability to name objects, ability to repeat phrases, ability to list names of things in a category (e.g., list of fruits), ability to find the best rhyming word, ability to determine if a word is real.
• MindStreams® Tests: Verbal Function Test (tests of rhyming and naming).
  
  

• Information Processing

• Brain Areas Involved: All brain regions, with focus on white matter.
• Affected Abilities: Impacts ability of how quickly you can make decisions, analyze information, and determine friend or foe.
• Problems with information processing can lead to: Decisions are slowed, thinking is slow, learning is poor as sound processing is slow and ineffective, driving is unsafe.
• MindStreams® Areas of Focus: Reaction time tests for making quick decisions, reaction time tests that progressively require more information processing and timed test for completing a puzzle.
• MindStreams® Tests: Stage Information Processing Test and Timed Test for Completing a Puzzle (as well as others like the GoNoGo Test, Stroop Test, Catch Game Test).
  
  

• Motor Skills

• Brain Areas Involved: Frontal lobe areas of premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, and dorsolateral prefrontal motor cortex.
• Affected Abilities: Impacts ability to learn new skills, plan out multi-step actions, following through on a motor plan, making quick decisions involving movement and sequencing skills for movement.
• Problems with motor skills can lead to: Difficulty with learning new skills, slowness in performing new skills, poor performance of sequences necessary to complete an action.
• MindStreams® Areas of Focus: Timed tests of planning courses of action, sequences, games involving planning and execution, problem solving relating to sequencing and tests of tracking.
• MindStreams® Tests: Catch Game Test (Motor Planning and Motor Speed) and Finger Tapping Test.