What is a Comprehensive Neuropsychological Evaluation?
The goal of a comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation is to assess your brain functioning across multiple cognitive and psychological domains. We want to get a full picture of how you are doing cognitively and emotionally.
- A clinical interview to understand your concerns and background history.
- A battery of tests to assess brain performance compared to similar individuals.
- A neuropsychological report summarizing concerns, test results, and recommendations.
- A feedback meeting to review the evaluation results together.
- With your consent, a review of medical records or input from someone who knows you well.
What happens during testing?
During testing, we will ask you to do various tasks that may include remembering information, reading, writing, drawing designs, and solving problems. We may also ask you to rate your emotions for the psychological part of the evaluation.
How should I prepare for my neuropsychological evaluation?
Neuropsychological testing can be impacted by a variety of factors beyond cognitive abilities, including vision or hearing problems, fatigue, health or emotional stressors, and some medications. Because we want to assess your current brain functioning and cognitive abilities, it is important to try and minimize these other factors. Before the evaluation, try and get a good night of sleep and take your medications as usually prescribed. If you have reading glasses or hearing aids, please bring them to the evaluation.
Potential Risks
Risks are minimal during a neuropsychological evaluation. They may consist of temporary anxiety about performance, frustration, fatigue, and perhaps discomfort related to the discussion of stressful or emotional topics. A small number of individuals could experience greater emotional distress from becoming aware of limitations that may have been previously unknown to them. To minimize these risks, the examiner will check in regularly with the individual and offer breaks throughout the testing session.
Benefits
The results of the neuropsychological evaluation will help the individual gain insight into their current cognitive strengths and weaknesses and may help with diagnosis clarification and treatment planning. Further, most individuals find the neuropsychological evaluation process interesting and even fun.