The most commonly accepted criteria for MCI derive from clinical settings where examining physicians classify a patient as MCI according to specific criteria as shown in the first box in the figure (Figure 10). The definition contains a number of criterion that include a subjective memory problem, plus objective impairment on cognitive tasks, which is recommended to be approximately 1.5SD below age norms. MCI can be heterogeneous as shown in the second box in the figure. The main impairment could be memory or another nonmemory domain in isolation, or could be a presentation of deficits in multiple cognitive domains.

From the clinical perspective, MCI has many roles:

It can be used to classify patients that seek medical care but do not fulfil criteria for dementia. They notice something is wrong, and do not perform normally on neuropsychological tests, but as of yet, they are not demented.

Classifying persons as MCI enables specialists such as neurologists and geriatricians to identify a patient as ?at risk? of developing dementia, and the patient can then be reassessed regularly to see whether they develop a disease such as AD.

MCI can help us to better understand the course of AD.

The clinical aspects of MCI will be discussed in a later module.

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