In India, neuropsychology in its infancy: Dr Urvashi Shah

NAGPUR: Stroke, head injury and dementia are three neurological illnesses which have become major problems requiring neurological services and are projected to eat up into our economy, senior neuro psychologist at Mumbai’s KEM hospital Dr Urvashi Shah told TOI. Dr Shah was in the city for a workshop on neuropsychology held at CIIMS hospital, Bajaj Nagar.

“The number of aged people are increasing and as a result dementia is going to become a big problem. Strokes occur because of the lifestyle and head injury due to amount of road traffic accidents in our country,” she said, adding that India has become the world capital for head injury and traffic accidents.

Explaining the field of neuropsychology, Dr Shah said, “It is the understanding of the brain-behaviour relationship. A neuropsychologist looks at behavioural outcome and study the neurological conditions when the brain gets damaged. Head injury, epilepsy or ageing population that has Alzheimer’s or dementia are common illnesses that fall in its purview.

Wherever the brain has got affected, certain functions get impaired leading to change in behaviour and way of doing things. Rehabilitation and surgery programs, prediction of memory outcomes, rehabilitation and checking cognition before and after a drug is administered are some of the functions of a neuro psychologist.

“Cognitive problems are an invisible disability. Due to road accidents, young people become disabled overnight. A person may not have a physical problem, but because memory is down, attention is low, and language gets affected to some extent, the society shuns them,” she said.

In India, neuropsychology is at its infancy, said Dr Shah, adding, “National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences and All India Institute of Medical Sciences are the only two institutes which have a neuropsychology department.”

Talking of developments in the field, Dr Shah mentioned Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI), where it is possible to create the tasks a person does when he is under scanner. These tasks help neuropsychologist understand areas of the brain such as language and memory networks in the brain.

“FMRI is important for mapping different functions of the brain and helping understand the functioning of the brain from research point of view. In Mumbai, FMRI is available at major institutes and we have created the paradigms (tasks) which we do in the scanner for language mapping,” she said, adding that the facility is not yet freely available across the country.