Now Playing

What do Clinical Neurologists Do?

Related Videos

Related Pages

Transcription

0:00
A neuropsychologist really looks at the interplay between how the brain functions
0:05
and what the brain does, and how that impacts what you do in the rest of your life–
0:09
socially, emotionally, physically, cognitively.
0:13
The bulk of what a neuropsychologist does is that through assessment,
0:17
we administer a battery of tests that tap into different functions of the brain.
0:23
So some of the tests, we’ll look at whole brain function.
0:26
Some of the tests, we’ll look really very specific functions of different areas of the brain,
0:31
to kind of look at how they’re all working together or not working together,
0:35
and then to apply that to difficulties that people may be having in their life,
0:40
as the result of an injury or an accident or some kind of disease process.
0:44
It’s really–largely it’s a diagnostic field.
0:47
that really looks at more closely why people are acting the way that they are acting
0:54
based on how their brain is processing information.
0:58
A subset of that is a rehabilitation neuropsychologist who does
1:02
much of the same kind of assessment, but then also works in the rehabilitation world
1:07
and helps a lot of the treatment team, in terms of their ability to implement
1:13
some of their therapeutic practices, based on what we’ve learned
1:16
about how the brain is functioning.
1:19
Neuropsychologists can do some cognitive rehabilitation themselves.
1:23
Very often it is referred out to other disciplines, occupational therapy, speech therapy.
1:28
We also can do some therapy, again, based on–largely it’s based on adjustment to
1:33
disability and injury, dealing with some of the psycho-social issues that go along with
1:38
acquiring some kind of a disability,
1:40
and adjusting to the fact that your brain is not working
1:42
the way that it used to.
1:44
Most people don’t think about all of the stuff that their brain does,
1:47
so that when it’s not functioning properly, they have a sense of
1:51
“I don’t feel like myself,” and are not quite sure why that is.
1:55
So a neuropsychologist may do a lot of education about why that is,
1:58
based on the results of the tests that we’ve got.