Neurological Evaluation
DTI Exam
VNG
Volumetrics Exam
Evoked Potential Test
Neuropsychological Clinical Assessment
Neuropsychological assessment is a performance-based method to assess cognitive functioning. This method can be used to assess cognitive performance after brain damage, brain disease, and severe mental illness.
Typically, neuropsychological assessment is performed with a battery approach, which involves tests of a variety of cognitive ability areas including memory, attention, processing speed, reasoning, judgment, and problem-solving, spatial, and language functions.
One of the most popular batteries is the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery or NAB (Stern & White, 2003) which consists of five domain-specific modules: Attention, Language, Memory, Spatial, and Executive Functions. A sixth module, Screening, allows the clinician to determine which of the other five domain-specific modules are appropriate to administer to an individual patient.
The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale 4th Edition (WAIS-IV) measures of learning, memory and processing speed are the neuropsychological domains that are most sensitive to acquired brain impairment in general. The Wechsler scales have played an important role in this Neuropsychological assessment and cognitive neuroscience. The WAIS-IV is intended to measure intellectual functioning, incorporating verbal, analogical, sequential, and quantitative reasoning, as well as working memory and psychomotor processing speed. The assessment battery can be standardized or targeted to the individual participant in the assessment.
We at Texas Brain Institute are happy to provide referrals from a team of Board-Certified Neuropsychologists for neuropsychological exams.
DTI Exam
Texas Brain Institute is the gold standard in diagnosing and treating Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).
Proving the details of a traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been elusive in the past. Most evidence of TBI is invisible in a routine MRI, that is because routine MRI cannot detect white matter injury that causes water to leak from neural tracts. However, state-of-the-art advanced brain MRI known as DTI (Diffusion Tensor Imaging) can accurately detect and document all the subtle injuries that interfere with the normal functioning of the operating circuits of the brain. DTI can detect this (leaking water), making it the best marker for brain injury.
At Texas Brain Institute, we use DTI data and FDA approved software to provide 3D color tractogram that illustrate where the brain has suffered white matter injury that causes water to leak from neural tracts, which has been associated with impairment.
DTI is in more than 20,000 peer-reviewed publications and courts throughout the United States are admitting DTI into evidence and allowing expert testimony based on it. DTI has been ruled admissible under Daubert and similar standards in numerous State and Federal Courts.
DTI is admissible for head injury from motor vehicle accidents, explosions, fights, anoxic injury (low oxygen) events, falls, and a wide variety of other types of events that can cause impairment of brain function.
A serious problem with DTI is the potential for misinterpretation by a neuroradiologist. Many neuroradiologists can only comment on anatomic findings. They do not see patients and can only warrant a clinical correlation. A neurosurgeon practices clinically and has a higher level of skills and training for the interpretation for brain images. A neurosurgeon can comment on clinical correlation between the patient’s symptoms and the findings on a DTI scan. Therefore, Texas Brain Institute relies on a neurosurgeon expert, an inventor of DTI (U.S. Patent – 5,560,360), Dr. Aaron G. Filler, MD Ph.D.
Videonystagmography (VNG)
We offer Videonystagmography (VNG) testing, which is a group of tests that evaluate the inner ear and central motor function by certain eye movements to discover the different range of imbalances such as acoustic neuroma, peripheral vestibular loss, benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), Traumatic brain injury (TBI) and other vestibular and central neurological disorders.
Our VNG testing consists of binocular goggles with infrared cameras that is worn throughout the test to measure bilateral eye movements, different ocular-motor test involving a series of lights and moving dots, positional testing consisting of various positions of the head and body, and caloric testing that introduces air or water of different temperatures into the ear canal.
Texas Brain Institute is in conjunction with LifeSciences Imaging to perform various diagnostic testing such as Videonystagmography (VNG). LifeSciences Imaging has several locations across Houston and Dallas /Fort Worth area. LifeSciences Imaging accepts Medicare and is in-network with major healthcare insurance providers.
Contact Texas Brain Institute to schedule a VNG exam at 1-888-900-1TBI or email contact@tbi.clinic.
Volumetric Brain MRI
A Volumetric Brain MRI with 3D post-processing allows Texas Brain Institute in conjunction with LifeSciences Imaging to quantify volume changes in the brain. The tool segments and measures volumes of 45 key brain structures including the hippocampus, ventricles, and other brain structures and compares the volumes to standard norms based on your age, gender, and cranial volume. Testing can last up to 90 minutes.
Volumetrics generates multiple visual and quantitative reports for each test performed, and includes details regarding hippocampal asymmetry, general morphology, total intracranial volume, and age-related atrophy.
This information helps assess various neurological conditions and neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, and traumatic brain injury.
LifeSciences Imaging has several locations across Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth area. LifeSciences Imaging accepts Medicare and is in-network with major healthcare insurance providers.
Evoked Potentials Testing
Evoked potentials are used to measure the electrical activity in certain areas of the brain and spinal cord. Electrical activity is produced by stimulation of specific sensory nerve pathways.
Evoked potential tests measures the brain’s response to sensory stimuli as a way of detecting and monitoring problems or irregularities with how the nervous system is functioning. The testing does not hurt, is non-invasive, and can last up to 1 hour. Evoked potentials tests can play a role in diagnosis MS, assessing hearing or sight, detecting nerve damages (such as to the optic nerve), diagnose and monitor diseases that damages nerves.
Texas Brain Institute is in conjunction with LifeSciences Imaging to perform various diagnostic testing such as Evoked Potential. LifeSciences Imaging has several locations across Houston and Dallas /Fort Worth area. LifeSciences Imaging accepts Medicare and is in-network with major healthcare insurance providers.
Contact Texas Brain Institute to learn more at 1-888-900-1TBI or email contact@tbi.clinic.