Neuropsychological Evaluation of Brain Injury, Memory Loss & Cognitive Disability

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Neuropsychological evaluations are requested specifically to help your doctors and other professionals understand how the different areas and systems of the brain are working. Testing is usually recommended when there are symptoms or complaints involving memory or thinking. This may be signaled by a change in concentration, organization, reasoning, memory, language, perception, coordination, or personality. The change may be due to any number of medical, neurological, psychological, or genetic causes. Testing will be helpful in understanding your specific situation. Neuropsychological exams are offered to children and adults who want second opinion regarding their condition or a specific disorder. Some adults have suspected for many years that they suffer from a neuro-cognitive disorder that originated in childhood. Neuropsychological assessment can determine whether such disorder is currently present. Adults with various neurological and neuro-psychiatric disorders may be required to undergo a neuropsychological evaluation to support their disability claim. Those children and adults, who have injured their head in an auto-accident (MVA), slip and fall accident or during a physical attack are also recommended to undergo a neuropsychological evaluation to determine which neuro-cognitive abilities remained uninjured and which abilities have been injured and impaired in such accident. Neuropsychological (NP) evaluation assesses symptom exaggeration, extent of brain injury and disability, and the types and severity of neurocognitive deficits. Serial NP exams allow tracking progressive decline or response to treatment, and differentiating various diagnoses. Upon the completion of the exam, neuropsychologists may also diagnose children with various cognitive and developmental disorders, learning disabilities, and ADHD, among others. If you have not sustained a head injury, you can obtain a baseline neuropsychological assessment to know what your current cognitive skills are like. This is a critical piece of information needed in case you develop memory loss and cognitive decline in the future. Comparison to your previously normal level of functioning will allow determining precisely how much of a cognitive decline you have developed- without any guess work. Neuropsychologist can judge whether or not your scores are normal for your age and educational background. Different illnesses result in different patterns of strengths and weaknesses on testing. Therefore, the results can be helpful in determining which areas of the brain might be involved and what illness might be operating. For instance, testing can help to differentiate among Alzheimer¿s disease, stroke, and depression. Your physician will use this information along with the results of other tests, such as brain imaging and blood tests, to come to the most informed diagnosis possible.