Blog

How RBANS complemented language assessment and supported clinical decision making in adult rehabilitation

As an SLP, you're often asked to make decisions that go beyond language alone—particularly when working with adults with suspected cognitive changes. Understanding a patient's attention, memory, and overall cognitive status can play an important role in shaping referrals, treatment plans, and expectations for recovery. 

Maria Brask, MS, CCC-SLP, spent years in inpatient rehabilitation, regularly using RBANS® with adults recovering from stroke and traumatic brain injury. Now, she shares how cognitive assessment fit into her clinical workflow—and why it matters for your patients. 

In this conversation, Maria shares how RBANS fit into her clinical workflow, how it complemented the language assessments she was already using, and how the results helped inform treatment planning, referrals, and patient care.

Memory loss has long been considered the defining hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. But there is more to the disease than misplaced keys, forgotten names, and other memory lapses. Reducing Alzheimer’s to memory alone oversimplifies a disease that affects multiple aspects of thinking, behavior, and daily functioning.

As researchers develop more sophisticated biomarkers, disease-modifying therapies, and prevention strategies, they also recognize that the tools used to measure cognition must evolve. Alzheimer’s affects far more than memory, and understanding the disease requires assessing the full range of cognitive and behavioral changes that patients experience.

This theme emerged during the third episode of “The Progress Profile: Alzheimer’s Research in Focus,” in which Maria Carrillo, Ph.D., chief science officer and medical affairs lead at the Alzheimer’s Association, joined moderator Dr. John Harrison to discuss why the field is broadening its view of cognitive decline.