It is often important to comprehensively assess all the brain’s thinking functions using testing known as a neuropsychometric assessment. Dr Teresa Lee is a neuropsychologist who has now joined East Neurology to provide this service to our patients.
Dr Teresa Lee is a Senior Clinical Neuropsychologist in Neuropsychiatry at the Prince of Wales Hospital. She has more than 25 years of experience in the assessment and diagnosis of neuropsychiatric disorders and neurodegenerative conditions in young and older adults. Examples of these include different types of dementias (such as Alzheimer’s disease, Frontotemporal dementia), as well as epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury. She receives referrals from general psychiatry, neurology, neuropsychiatry, and neurosurgery, as well as other medical disciplines such as medical and radiation oncology, infectious disease, and respiratory medicine.
Dr Lee completed a PhD in the School of Psychiatry, Medicine at the University of New South Wales in 2014. She investigated the genetic and environmental influences of neuropsychological functioning in older adults. Dr Lee is a Conjoint Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing at UNSW. She is also the leader of the neuropsychology arm of the multi-centred Older Australian Twins Study. Her research interest is in the longitudinal change in cognitive functioning in normal and pathological ageing.
What is Neuropsychological Testing?
Neuropsychological testing measures the way the brain functions. It gives information about the structural and operational integrity of your mind. The neuropsychological involves taking standardised tests, often with paper and pencil type evaluations. The tests are standardised meaning they are given in the same way to all patients and scored in a similar manner time after time. An individual’s scores on tests are interpreted by comparing their score to that of healthy people of a comparable demographic background (i.e., of similar age, education, gender, and ethnic background) and to anticipated levels of functioning (based on their work, for example).
From the overall results, we can then determine whether a person’s performance on any given task represents a strength or weakness. Although individual scores are important, the neuropsychologist determines an overall pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses and, in turn, to understand more about how the brain is working overall.
To read more about memory problems, you can look at our pages on exercise and your brain and ways to improve your memory. To find out more, WebMD has an excellent article on neuropsychology and neuropsychometric testing.