Neuropsychologist

If people were puppets, their brains would be the Puppeteers, perpetually pulling the strings that make them walk, talk, think, eat, sleep and breathe.

When you’re a Neuropsychologist, that makes you the Jim Henson of the human body, as it’s your job to manage the cause-and-effect relationship between brains and behaviors. Typically part of a medical team that includes Neurosurgeons, Psychiatrists and other specialists, you’re tasked as a Neuropsychologist with treating and rehabilitating patients that suffer from brain-related illness or injury. Your main role in patient care, however, is assessment. When patients suffer from brain diseases, disorders or distress, you help, their Doctors as the Neuropsychologist determine two things.

First of all, you help determine whether the causes of their conditions are physiological or psychological — physical or emotional — which requires you to administer standardized tests that evaluate patients’ cognitive functions as a means of assessing their brain functions. For instance, you may test patients’ memory, intelligence or logic in order to determine if corresponding areas of their brains have been damaged, studying what’s happening outside in order to evaluate what’s happening inside.

Second of all, you help determine what the psychological effects of brain conditions will be, advising patients and their families about the potential impact of illnesses on their memories, emotions and behaviors so they can prepare for and cope with them.

Although you likely work with people and in clinical settings, you may also work with animals and in research settings. Always, however, your goal is connecting the cognitive dots, walking the line between psychology and physiology.