[Cerebral blood changes during neuropsychological tests administered by Doppler sonography. Preliminary report]

The preliminary studies on cerebral blood flow changes during neuropsychologic tests were carried out using transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD). The procedure with the standardized cerebral activation in order to obtain the control brain activity level was elaborated and tested. Blood flow velocity changes were measured during two groups of tests: linguistic with left dominant hemisphere and visual-spatial with right dominant hemisphere. Similar dynamics of blood flow changes was observed with all kinds of brain activation with the maximum velocity increase of 15-20%. The velocity measured in the dominant hemisphere was about 8-10% above the contralateral side. TCD seems to be complementary to the neuropsychologic tests useful especially in diagnosis of different types of dementia.