Cognitive impairment and dementia associated with cerebrovascular disease is not a unitary entity, but one typified by clinical, pathological, and aetiological heterogeneity. Different variants or subtypes have been noted for over a century but still the classification and categorization of vascular dementia (VaD) and vascular cognitive impairment is evolving, current taxonomies incorporating combinations of lesion aetiology, pathological type, neuroanatomical location, and clinical syndrome (e.g. Amar & Wilcock, 1996; Chiu et al., 2000; Erkinjuntti & Gauthier, 2002; Bowler & Hachinski, 2003; De Leeuw & van Gijn, 2003; O'Brien et al., 2003; Rockwood et al., 2003; Godefroy & Bogousslavsky, 2007). Various consensus diagnostic criteria for VaD have been proposed, including the State of California Alzheimer's Disease Diagnostic and Treatment Centers (ADDTC) criteria (Chui et al., 1992) and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Association Internationale pour la Recherche et l'Enseignement en Neurosciences (NINDS-AIREN) criteria (Román et al., 1993), as well as the general criteria of DSM and ICD. NINDS-AIREN recognizes the need to establish a causal relationship between cerebrovascular lesions and cognitive deficit both spatially and temporally, emphasizing the importance of neuroimaging to corroborate clinical findings (Román et al., 1993). However, because memory impairment is the most salient feature in Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia, it has been noted that many of these diagnostic criteria have been inadvertently ‘Alzheimerized’, with undue emphasis placed on memory loss at the expense of other neuropsychological features (Bowler & Hachinski, 2003).