Neuropsychological Testing in San Jose
A comprehensive evaluation answers a question. The first job is figuring out which question you’re actually asking.
People come here after something stopped making sense. A child who is bright and failing. An adult who has been treated for the wrong thing for a decade. A parent whose memory changed and nobody can say why. A student who needs documentation before a deadline.
Those are different questions, and they require different evaluations. What they have in common is that a checklist won’t answer any of them.
What a comprehensive evaluation actually is
A comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation measures cognitive functioning directly, with standardized instruments, and compares your results against normative samples. That comparison is what produces a score — and a score is what a school, a court, an agency, or an insurer can act on.
A clinical impression is not a finding. “He seems inattentive” doesn’t open a door. A measured, documented deficit does.
The evaluation covers intelligence, academic functioning, learning and memory, attention, processing speed, executive functioning, language, visual-motor and constructional ability, adaptive functioning, effort and symptom validity, and mental health variables — with depth allocated according to the referral question rather than run to a template.
What I evaluate
- Cognitive and neurocognitive change — after injury, illness, concussion, or an unexplained decline in functioning
- Memory concerns and dementia evaluation — establishing whether change is present, what kind, and how severe
- Intellectual and IQ assessment — for children and adults, including intellectual disability and giftedness
- Learning disorders — dyslexia, dyscalculia, disorders of written expression
- ADHD — measured directly rather than inferred from a questionnaire
- Autism spectrum — children and adults, including late and missed diagnosis
- Psychological evaluation for adults — where the diagnostic picture hasn’t resolved after years of treatment
- Capacity and functional questions — testamentary capacity, conservatorship, independent living
Why the ruling out is most of the work
Nearly every diagnosis in the DSM-5 carries some element of attention, memory, or executive difficulty. Anxiety does. Depression does. Sleep disorders, trauma, medication effects, thyroid disease, and ordinary life circumstance all do.
So the finding that matters is rarely “this is present.” It’s “this is present, and these eleven other things that look identical are not.”
That takes time, testing, and collateral information from people who have observed the person in more than one setting. A brief interview and a rating scale cannot do it, and an evaluation built that way tends to confirm whatever the referral already suspected.
How it runs — one trip to San Jose
One day in the office. Everything else happens from wherever you are.
- Diagnostic interview — remote. The history, in conversation. No reason to drive for it.
- Inventories — sent to you and to those who know you best. Completed at home, on your own time.
- Testing — one day, in person, at 1120 McKendrie Street. The only trip, most of the time.
- Feedback — remote. What the testing found, and what it means.
The testing day is built to resemble a real work day, school day, or exam day. What you’re trying to understand often doesn’t appear in the first ninety minutes, when everyone is fresh. It appears at hour four, when attention has been spent and the compensating stops working.
Where the office is
My office is at 1120 McKendrie Street in San Jose, in the Rose Garden neighborhood off The Alameda.
People come here from across Santa Clara County — San Jose, Santa Clara, Campbell, Los Gatos, Saratoga, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Milpitas, Morgan Hill — as well as from Santa Cruz over the hill and from up the Peninsula. Full-day neuropsychological evaluation isn’t something every practice offers, so the drive is normal, and because the battery runs in a single day it’s one trip rather than a series of appointments.
For Regional Center questions, San Andreas Regional Center serves both Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. For school questions, each district sets its own standard for an IEP or a 504 plan. The more stringent the agency’s guidelines, the more comprehensive the assessment needs to be — so tell us which door you’re trying to open, and the evaluation gets built for that door.
What it costs
Diagnostic evaluations run $6,500 to $7,500, depending on complexity. It’s a flat fee. I don’t take insurance, though many people recover part of the cost afterward — here’s how fees work, including what a PPO typically reimburses and the codes you’ll need.
Court-related and accommodation evaluations are quoted individually.
If the fee isn’t workable, say so. If an evaluation isn’t the right thing for your question at all, I’ll tell you that, and it won’t cost you anything to find out.
Start here
Call or text: 321-208-1554 or 321-298-8668
Tell us the question you’re trying to answer and what the evaluation needs to accomplish. Jessie will tell you which evaluation fits, what’s involved, what it costs, how long it takes, and what an evaluation can and cannot determine.
No pressure at any point. Some people who call don’t need an evaluation at all, and we tell them so.