The neurobehavioral cognitive status examination(NCSE), a screening examination that assesses cognition in a brief but quantitative fashion, uses as an independent test to evaluate cognitive function within five major areas: language, constructions, memory, calculation, and reasoning. And the examination separately assesses levels of consciousness, orientation, and attention. This instrument quickly identifies intact areas of functioning, yet provides more detailed assessment in areas of dysfunction. The level of cognition is classified as unimpaired and mild, moderate, severe impaired. Standardization data are provided for 61 healthy adults, age ranged from 40 to 88 years and for 30 patients with documented brain lesions, age ranged from 16 to 78 years. The mean scores of the healthy eldest group, age ranged from 80 to 88 years, showed moderate impaired in construction and mild impaired in memory, calculation, similarity. The other groups showed unimpaired in all 5 areas, but the mean score of memory was in low normal value in 60 to 69 and 70 to 79 years group. The mean score of patients were significantly lower than those of the healthy group in orientaion, attention, construction, memory, and judgement (P<0.05). The sensitivity was 86.7 % for NCSE. We concluded that NCSE was a brief but sensitive test for the detection of cognitive dysfunction of the patients with brain lesion.
