AD patients typically display a cognitive profile with impairments in multiple cognitive domains. This cognitive profile develops over time, and AD patients often start to show a progressive decay of working memory. The patients display increased sensitivity to distraction in memory tasks, the capacity of working memory measured, eg, digit span is, however, at first still intact. Interestingly, the medications used currently to treat AD like acetylcholinesterase inhibitors or memantine work partly by increasing attention and concentration and work mainly in mild-to-moderate AD.46,47The deficits in attention and working memory associated with damage to frontal subcortical circuits also influence executive functions in AD, impairing planning, problem solving, and goal-directed behavior such as the ability to deploy response alternatives or modify behavior. AD patients show impaired results in tests that require planning, problem solving, or cognitive flexibility, eg, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, the Stroop test, or the Tower of London Test. The manifestation of impairment in such tests of executive functioning corresponds to the onset of difficulties in the performance of daily activities in these patients and marks the progression to the state of full dementia. The Boston Naming test assesses the ability to name pictures of objects through spontaneous responses, and the need for various types of cueing. Cued recall deficits are most closely associated with CSF biomarkers indicative of AD in subjects with mild cognitive impairment. This novel finding complements results from prospective clinical studies and provides further empirical support for cued recall as a specific indicator of prodromal AD, in line with recently proposed research criteria.48 Another surprisingly simple test is the Clock Drawing test. AD patients show early difficulties in visuospatial processing and conceptual errors like misrepresentation of numbers in the command, but not in the copy, condition, pointing to deficits in semantic memory. The Trail Making Test A+B is a neuropsychological test of visual attention measuring mental processing speed, and the ability to switch between different tasks. It consists of two parts in which the subject is asked to connect a set of 25 dots as fast as possible while maintaining accuracy. Visual search speed, scanning and processing abilities, mental flexibility, and executive functioning can be assessed with this test.Regarding animal models, there are plenty of paradigmata available to test memory functions, but there is an overall lack of validated animal data that can be aligned with similar tests in human settings. Snigdha et al started with the comprehensive toolbox for Neurologic Behavioral Function from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which contains evaluated tests for cognitive, motor, sensory, and emotional function for use in epidemiologic and clinical studies spanning 3 to 85 years of age and analyzed strengths and limitations of available animal behavioral tests to find matches. They defined a preclinical battery that aims to parallel the NIH Toolbox, and may help to close the gap between data from different species.49Subjective cognitive impairment without detectable objective memory deficit may no longer merely regarded as “normal aging” since it has been shown that it is a major risk factor for the development of dementia.50 A clear definition of what subjective memory impairment or subjective cognitive impairment actually mean is currently lacking. An international task force is, however, working on standard operating procedures that would enable comparable study designs. A consensus regarding naming the concept “subjective cognitive impairment” in view of previously used terminology such as “subjective memory impairment” seems to be arising. Subjective cognitive impairment is defined as the individual coming up with the mere feeling that something is not in order, without any objective parameters supporting that notion in the first place. Such a stage labeled subjective cognitive impairment may precede mild cognitive impairment in the continuum of Alzheimer disease manifestation. Using such a definition and without objective neuropsychological test alterations, the atrophy pattern of patients with subjective cognitive impairment seem to be related to the atrophy pattern seen in AD.51 Individuals with subjective memory impairment showed greater similarity to an AD gray matter pattern, and episodic memory decline was associated with an AD gray matter pattern in probands with subjective memory impairment.