Neuropsychology FAQs
When is a Neuropsychological Assessment appropriate?
There are a number of reasons a person may require a Neuropsychological Assessment including:
- Establishing or clarifying a diagnosis or differentiating between two or more conditions (particularly if problems are subtle) and not otherwise able to be diagnosed using current neuroimaging procedures. For example determining if cognitive impairment is due to a mental health condition (i.e., depression or anxiety) or cognitive impairment is due to neurodegenerative disease (i.e. Alzheimer’s dementia).
- Determining cognitive strengths and weaknesses (i.e. for employment or rehabilitation purposes)
- Baseline/Review Assessment – to monitor cognitive changes over time (i.e., change in medication, following an accident or neurosurgery).
- Increase understanding of the impact of a brain injury on an individual’s level of function.
- Guiding return to work, study or rehabilitation planning.
- Identifying strategies that may assist performance and help improve quality of life.
- Determine decision-making capacity, testamentary capacity or need for guardianship/financial management for the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
- Demonstrating how well an individual is recovering from an acquired brain injury
Which medical conditions may benefit from a Neuropsychological Assessment?
Any medical condition that involves an insult or trauma to the brain can benefit from Neuropsychological assessment. These include:
- Neurodegenerative conditions (i.e., Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease)
- Traumatic or Acquired Brain Injury (i.e., following motor vehicle accidents, sport-related head injuries, falls and assault)
- Neurological conditions (i.e., Stroke, tumours, epilepsy and arteriovenous malformations)
- Inflammatory diseases implicating the central nervous system (i.e., Multiple Sclerosis)
- Neuropsychiatric and mood disorders (i.e., schizophrenia, PTSD, depression and anxiety)
- Brain injury following hypoxia and long-term alcohol abuse
- Other medical issues that affect cognitive function (i.e., transplant, renal impairment and autoimmune diseases).
What is Cognitive Rehabilitation?
Cognitive rehabilitation is based on a problem-solving framework, and is a term used to describe training given to individuals who have had a brain injury, in order to address and improve specific cognitive abilities that are impaired. This is typically undertaken to support and improve an individual’s return to work, maintain their independence in managing activities of daily living and support optimal functioning and quality of life.
For example individuals who have had a stroke, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury or other non-progressive neurological conditions, often complain of chronic memory problems. Group based memory training is one such example of cognitive rehabilitation.
What is the Group Memory Training Program?
The MEMO Rehab Training program, is an empirically validated 6-week session program designed to help people develop practical knowledge and skills to address their everyday memory concerns, such as remembering names, previous conversations or events as well as failures to remember to carry out planned activities. The program was developed to meet the needs and memory concerns of patients with various non-progressive neurological disorders, including traumatic brain injury, stroke and epilepsy.
Whilst increasing understanding of memory problems, the program is designed to promote self-awareness and self-efficacy.
The training program is based on the neuropsychological literature for memory rehabilitation, particularly focusing on compensatory memory strategies. It is also based upon training approaches and strategies from the fields of clinical psychology, experimental learning and cognitive neurosciences. There were several key themes used in the development of the program including functional memory processes (i.e., attention/encoding, storage and retrieval); compensatory memory strategies (i.e., internal/mental strategies and external aids); and psychoeducation (i.e., lifestyle factors including nutrition, exercise and sleep as well as mood).