Neuropsychology/Neuroscience Track

Clinical experiences include supervised interviewing, neuropsychological testing, test interpretation, case conceptualization, report writing, consultation with healthcare professionals, and feedback with patients and families. Interns will receive face-to-face clinical supervision on every case by Neuropsychology faculty. Typical patient populations include individuals with neurodegenerative disorders, cancer, movement disorders, traumatic brain injury, stroke, and chronic medical illnesses. Assessment is primarily outpatient although inpatient experience is also available. Clinical training can accommodate a range of specific interests and professional goals though foundational differential diagnosis skills are given priority. Interns will conduct several full neuropsychological assessments per week involving either hands-on neuropsychological testing or with the assistance of a psychometrist.

Clinical training is designed to meet the guidelines provided by the Houston Conference on Specialty Education and Training in Clinical Neuropsychology as well as the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC) Taxonomy for Education and Training in Clinical Neuropsychology. Our faculty strongly encourages all interns to enter the program with the goal of completing a 2-year specialty postdoctoral fellowship and eventual board certification in clinical neuropsychology through the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP/ABCN).

General Adult Neuropsychology Clinic
Interns on this service will gain breadth in their general differential diagnosis skills. Referrals are received from a range of departments, including Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry, Transplant Medicine, Cardiology, and other specialties. This rotation is ideal for individuals with specialty neuropsychology training who would benefit from a broader understanding of neurocognitive dynamics across common medical conditions and demographics.  

Movement Disorder Clinic
The medical team at OSUWMC’S Center for Neuromodulation is nationally recognized for their work in deep brain stimulation and focused ultrasound ablation treatment for conditions such as essential tremor and Parkinson’s disease. Our neuropsychology team provides pre- and post-surgical cognitive and psychological evaluations to help identify candidates for surgery and monitor functioning over time. Interns are involved a range of screening and comprehensive assessment opportunities. This rotation includes a strong emphasis in multidisciplinary consultation with other OSUMC providers including neurosurgeons, neurologists, radiologists, nursing, and research staff.

Neuro-Oncology Clinic
The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer (OSUCCC – James) is one of 51 NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers in the nation, a designation maintained since 1976. OSUCCC – James is also the only cancer program in the United States that features a National Cancer Institute (NCI)–designated comprehensive cancer center aligned with a nationally ranked academic medical center and a freestanding cancer hospital on the campus of one of the nation’s largest public universities. In this context, interns have a unique opportunity to gain specialty neuro-oncology experience both at the OSUCCC – James and in our outpatient clinic. Neuropsychological evaluations include a broad range of screening and comprehensive assessment opportunities. Interns may also participate in multidisciplinary case conference including neurosurgeons, neurologists, and radiologist.

Geriatric Clinic
Interns will gain experience in providing high quality medical care for older persons (those over 65 years of age) presenting to our outpatient neuropsychology clinic with cognitive concerns. Interns will improve their knowledge of common cognitive concerns among the elderly, including neurodegenerative disorders (e.g. Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia, vascular dementia), metabolic disturbance, chronic health conditions, polypharmacy, and mood disorders. In this clinic, a special emphasis is placed on performing competency evaluations and may include opportunities for research in this area. 

Epilepsy Clinic
Ohio State’s Comprehensive Epilepsy Center is designated a level 4 epilepsy center, the highest rating of the National Association of Epilepsy Centers, for the advanced level of our medical and surgical epilepsy care. Interns will perform clinical assessments of patients with seizure disorders, most of whom are undergoing comprehensive evaluation for epilepsy surgery. Assessment results for surgical candidates are presented by the staff neuropsychologist at a weekly, multidisciplinary patient management conference.

Neuropsychology interns will have one day of protected research time each week. Given the nature of the internship year, interns will have a greater likelihood of benefiting from being involved in faculty research projects rather than initiating an independent project. The opportunities to participate in neuroscience research are as follows. 

Clinical Neuroscience & Psychotherapeutics Research Unit - Emil F. Coccaro, MD 

The Coccaro Lab (Clinical Neuroscience & Psychotherapeutics Research Unit - CNPRU) primarily studies impulsive aggressive and suicidal behavior from phenomenological, psychobiologic, and psychotherapeutic points of view.  Because of his very recent arrival at OSUMC, Dr. Coccaro will be spending much of the next 6-8 months restarting his three currently funded projects: a) Effect of alcohol infusion on social cognition (fMRI) and aggression (NIAAA), b) Effect of nitrous oxide inhalation on social cognition (fMRI) and aggression (NIMH), and c) developing neuro-rehabilitative approaches to impulsive aggression (Pritzker-Pucker Family Foundation).  In addition, Dr. Coccaro has a large data base (> 1600 subjects including Healthy Controls, those with Mood, Anxiety, & Personality Disorder, and Intermittent Explosive Disorder – IED).  This data base includes clinical, diagnostic (DSM-5 Dx by SCID/SIPD), and questionnaire data relevant to mood/anxiety/personality disorder as well as IED.  He also has a number of potential manuscripts in the area of IED, the impulsive aggressive disorder his research led to its current DSM-5 diagnostic criteria, that interns could co-author with him (often as first authors). 

Clinical Neuroscience Research Lab - Stephanie Gorka, PhD

Interns working in the Clinical Neuroscience Research Lab will have the opportunity to participate in Dr. Gorka’s research which focuses on the neurobiology of substance abuse and stress-related disorders. Her work uses a range of psychophysiological and neurobiological measures (i.e., startle eyeblink potentiation, event-related brain potentials or ERPs, and functional magnetic resonance imagining or fMRI) to probe individual differences in brain function in human volunteers. During the elective interns will collaborate with Dr. Gorka to develop a research project using her multimodal datasets. One of her primary datasets comes from a longitudinal NIH-funded study designed to identify neural and behavioral risk markers for psychopathology in college-aged young adults. Interns will be encouraged to explore new methods and statistical approaches to advance their pre-doctoral research training.

The Phan Lab - Luan Phan, MD

The Phan Lab believes that solving the mystery of mental illness and improving how we treat mental illness begins with studying the brain. Therefore, the lab employs affective, cognitive, and social neuroscience perspectives and uses a multi-level, multi-unit analytic approach that integrates self-report and clinical scales, neuropsychological assessments, behavioral performance, neuropsychopharmacology, and peripheral and central psychophysiology. In addition, our studies often incorporate clinical trials of pharmacotherapy and psychosocial interventions, to interrogate the mechanisms of illness and recovery. The lab primarily uses magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI, DTI, sMRI), electroencephalography (EEG) of event-related potentials (ERP), electromyography (EMG) of startle response, and other psychophysiologic readouts as assays of brain function as they relate to emotion, affect regulation, motivation and cognition. We focus on anxiety, post-traumatic stress, depression and alcohol and drug use disorders. The lab is intentionally multi-disciplinary and patient-oriented. Ultimately, we seek to understand mental illness more fully, make current treatments better and innovate treatment and prevention strategies that are more targeted and precise, in order to avert or reduce the burden of mental illness. Click here for examples.