DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR DEMENTIA, MODERATE AND MILD NEUROCOGNITIVE DISORDERS IN NEUROLOGICAL PATIENTS: LINGUISTIC PARTS OF BASELINE NEUROCOGNITIVE TESTS

Cognitive impairment and dementia are the problems of great importance in neurology, psychology, neuropsychology, psychiatry and clinical linguistics. Causes for cognitive impairment and dementia are various: Alzheimer's disease, vascular diseases (Binswanger's disease, CADASIL Cerebral Autosomal Dominant Arteriopathy with Subcortical Infarcts and Leukoencephalopathy, etc.), dementia with Lewy bodies, frontotemporal degeneration, Huntington's disease, Creutzfeldt's Jalcob's disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, tumors, infections, etc. Dementia and moderate cognitive disorders significantly decrease the quality of life of the patients and their relatives, which makes it necessary to reveal the first signs of these diseases as early as possible to prevent their further progress. To provide this early diagnostics, scientists have developed a number of internationally acclaimed neurocognitive tests which contain tasks helping to check different cognitive functions. Unfortunately, there is a lack of linguistic studies devoted to them, especially in the aspect of adequate and precise translation. Usually translated by neurologists and neuropsychologists, without the aid of linguists, the translations of tests may contain incorrect parts from the point of view of linguistics. The quality and adequacy of translations influence the results of diagnostics. Our paper aims to describe these problems. It also contains additional information on the necessity of translating the abovementioned neurocognitive tests into Tatar language one of the widely spoken languages in the Republic of Tatarstan.