At the Barbara and Maurice Deane Center for Wellness and Cognitive Health, we have a team of experts, that includes neurologists, neuropsychologists, nurses, and social workers. We evaluate and care for people with concerns about cognition, such as memory, language, and thinking difficulties, or about behavior, such as disinhibition, loss of empathy, and loss of motivation.
Conditions We Treat
We evaluate and treat a variety of conditions including:
- Behavioral variant of Frontotemporal Dementia (bvFTD)
- Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)
- Corticobasal syndrome (CBS)
- Dementia secondary to Alzheimer’s disease (AD)
- Dementia secondary to vascular disease
- Dementia with Lewy Body Disease (DLB)
- Early onset dementia
- Mild cognitive impairment (MCI)
- Parkinson’s Disease Dementia (PDD)
- Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA)
- Primary Progressive Aphasia(PPA), including
- Logopenic variant
- Non-fluent variant
- Semantic variant
- Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP)Rapidly progressive dementia (RPD)
We also provide treatments for cognitive and behavioral symptoms related to other conditions like epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, and multiple sclerosis.
Evaluation
When you come to see us, we try to make the process as simple as possible. First, a trained nurse will review your information and pair you with the most appropriate clinician to begin your evaluation. The nurse will decide whether you should begin with a geriatric, psychiatric, or neurologic clinician.
To ask your primary care physician to make a referral, please ask them to complete the provider referral form.
If you would like to refer yourself, please complete the patient referral form.
When you arrive at the Deane Center, you can expect a complete exam. This may include a review of your medical history, social history, and detailed descriptions of your complaints. We ask you to bring a family member or a close friend to your appointment. That person can help describe symptoms and provide you with support. The clinician may do cognitive testing to check your memory, language skills, visual processing, and other symptoms related to thinking, mood, or behavior. The clinician will talk with you about what they see.
We may need to do additional testing. This could include a neuropsychological evaluation, bloodwork, or a brain scan. Once your clinician confirms your diagnosis, they will design a personalized treatment plan and discuss it with you.
Your First Visit
Your first appointment is for 3 hours. Unless otherwise discussed, you should bring a close family member or friend with you to your first visit. This person will be needed for approximately 1 hour of your appointment with the doctor (after you complete the intake process). This friend or family member will be included in your initial interview and help provide important information about you. Your family member or friend can leave after the interview process.
The evaluation itself includes an interview to learn more about you and your background and to discuss the issues of concern to you and your healthcare provider. This takes anywhere from 30-60 minutes. The rest of your appointment will be the formal evaluation.
A complete evaluation generally takes between three and five hours to complete, depending on the complexity of the issues to be addressed by the evaluation and the patient’s condition (for example, fatigue, confusion, and motor slowing can extend the time required for an evaluation). Occasionally, it is necessary to complete the evaluation over two or more sessions. In general, the clinician attempts to elicit the patient’s best possible performance under optimal conditions.
The neuropsychologist will then analyze your results and write a report. The results will be forwarded to your referring physician within two weeks of completing the examination. Patients are given the option of returning to the neuropsychologist for a feedback session to review the results. Otherwise, they can return to their referring provider. The results must be reviewed with the patient to assure their understanding of the outcome. The report will be made available to the patient after it is reviewed with a healthcare provider.
As a courtesy to other patients seeking an appointment, if you are unable to keep your appointment, please call us more than 48 hours in advance and we will make every attempt to re-schedule your appointment. For further detail, please check our office policy.
Please be aware that our neuropsychologists are unable to conduct academic testing of adults to determine the presence of a specific learning disability, ADHD, or determine eligibility for accommodations for coursework or examinations. Any adult needing academic testing should contact: the Center for ADHD, LD and Related Disorders at Mount Sinai Medical Center.