Clinical training

As a fellow, you will see patients in the Behavioral Neurology Clinic every Tuesday and Thursday. The remainder of the week is flexible to allow you to train in neuropsychology, neuroradiology, neuropathology, sleep medicine, speech pathology, psychiatry, and brain injury rehabilitation.

Didactic training

Didactic training is an integral part of Mayo Clinic's Behavioral Neurology Fellowship Program. You will participate in one-on-one instruction, clinical conferences, seminars, small discussion groups, and journal clubs.

Core curriculum

Several half-days per week, you will see patients with a variety of symptoms associated with common and uncommon neurobehavioral disorders.

You will develop proficiency in the following areas:

• Administering a mental status examination and interpreting the results.
• Expanding evaluations in areas such as attention/concentration, language, praxis, visuospatial functioning, and reasoning/problem solving.
• Discussing the indications for and interpretation of neuropsychological testing.
• Relating neurobehavioral deficits to anatomical areas.
• Discussing the diagnostic approach to evaluating patients with acute encephalopathy/delirium, subacute encephalopathy, chronic progressive encephalopathy/dementia, and distinct neurobehavioral syndromes (e.g., transient global amnesia, limbic encephalitis).
• Discussing the epidemiology, genetics, molecular biology/pathophysiology, clinical features, radiologic features and pathologic hallmarks of the degenerative and prion dementias.

You will also develop proficiency in evaluating and managing patients with a variety of conditions such as:

• Degenerative disorders/dementia
  • Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)
  • Alzheimer's Disease (AD)
  • Parkinson's Disease with Dementia (PDD)
  • Lewy Body Dementia/Lewy Body Disease /Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB)
  • Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD)/Pick's Disease
  • Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA)
  • Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD)
  • Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP)
  • Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA)/Progressive Cortical Visual Dysfunction Syndrome
  • Huntington's Disease (HD)
• Vascular Dementia
  • Dementia with cerebrovascular disease/Vascular Dementia
  • Binswanger's Disease
  • Cerebral Autosomal Dominant Arteriopathy with Subcortical Infarcts and Leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL)
• Prion Disorders
  • Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD)
  • Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker Syndrome (GSS)
• Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH)
• Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
• Autoimmune/Inflammatory Encephalopathies
  • Encephalopathy associated with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis ("Hashimoto's Encephalopathy")
  • Sjogren's Associated Encephalopathy
  • Nonvasculitic Autoimmune Inflammatory Meningoencephalopathy (NAIM)
• Cognitive impairment/behavioral changes associated with brain tumors, infarcts, meningitis/encephalitis and sleep disorders

A superb multidisciplinary Behavioral Neurology Course takes place one afternoon per week from November to March every other year. All lectures are captured on video, which can be viewed at any time during the fellowship.

Conferences

Behavioral neurology fellows may attend a variety of conferences, which include:

• Neurology Grand Rounds (each Monday)
• Inpatient Neurology/Neurosurgery Grand Rounds (each Wednesday)
• Subspecialty Conference (Behavioral Neurology presents every sixth week)

Research training

Mayo Clinic neurologists have been involved in innovative and groundbreaking research for decades.

Staff in the Division of Behavioral Neurology participates in several research programs, most funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). You will see many research patients with unique and often complex neurobehavioral disorders, as well as those who are "aging successfully."

You will be encouraged to participate in clinical trials, protocol development, and grant writing. Numerous presentations at national and international conferences have been developed from this exposure, and all previous fellows have been successful in publishing manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals, as well as abstracts and book chapters.

Call frequency

The training in behavioral neurology is primarily in the outpatient setting, and therefore behavioral neurology fellows are not required to participate in any call overnight or on weekends or holidays.

Off-site rotations

You may spend most or all of your training in Rochester . However, may spend two to eight weeks at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville and two to eight weeks at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale .

Mayo Clinic funds the authorized additional costs of travel, housing, automobile rental and licensure fees.

Evaluation

To ensure acquisition of adequate knowledge and development of appropriate technical skills, your performance is monitored carefully during the course of Behavioral Neurology training at Mayo Clinic. Formal evaluation by supervising faculty members occurs quarterly. Each trainee is assigned a faculty adviser for the purpose of providing feedback. In addition, you regularly will evaluate rotations and faculty to ensure education needs are met and to provide feedback to the faculty to guide their efforts to improve the program.

Career development

You will meet periodically with your faculty adviser and the training program director to discuss individual goals. Mayo Clinic recruits many of its staff physicians from its own training programs. Thus, after completion of the Behavioral Neurology Fellowship, career opportunities may be available at one of Mayo Clinic's practice sites.

Teaching opportunities

will have the opportunity to participate in the Neurology Residency core lectures and Behavioral Neurology Conference, as well as provide instruction to medical students and residents rotating in Behavioral Neurology. Our fellows have developed several teaching files and educational presentations, which are available to all trainees in the fellowship program.