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