Addenbrooke's cognitive examination

The Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination (ACE) and its subsequent versions (Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination-Revised, ACE-R and Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination III, ACE-III) are neuropsychological tests used to identify cognitive impairment in conditions such as dementia. The Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination (ACE) and its subsequent versions (Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination-Revised, ACE-R and Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination III, ACE-III) are neuropsychological tests used to identify cognitive impairment in conditions such as dementia. The Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination was originally developed as a theoretically motivated extension of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) which attempted to address the neuropsychological omissions and improve the screening performance of the latter.The ACE encompassed tests of five cognitive domains: attention/orientation, memory, language, verbal fluency, and visuospatial skills. It is scored out of 100, with a higher score denoting better cognitive function. At the recommended cut-off scores of 88 and 83, the ACE was reported to have good sensitivity and specificity for identifying dementia (0.93 and 0.71; 0.82 and 0.96, respectively). The ACE also incorporated the MMSE, such that this score (out of 30) might also be generated. The ACE-R was a development of the earlier ACE which also incorporated the MMSE, but had clearly defined subdomain scores. The ACE-III was developed to improve the performance of certain parts of the test and also to avoid a potential copyright violation by replacing the elements shared with the MMSE. The current version of the test is the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination-III (ACE-III). This consists of 19 activities which test five cognitive domains: attention, memory, fluency, language and visuospatial processing.