What am I looking at? An introductory course on neuroradiology for the CL psychiatrist on how to read neuro-imaging and make clinical correlations

Abstract: Because of the overlap between psychiatry and neurology, C-L psychiatrists must have a working knowledge of neurology, think through medical, neurological, and psychiatric differential diagnoses, and make useful, specific recommendations. Given the centrality of imaging in modern medicine, we propose that basic understanding of neuro-radiology, what to order and knowing what you’re looking at, is an important skill for CL psychiatrists. This course will teach basic neuroradiology skills to CL psychiatrists and cover 4 main topic areas: 1) Introduction to radiology, 2) basic neuroanatomy in brain MRI, 3) imaging findings and clinical correlations in strokes, and 4) neuropsychiatric symptoms and associated imaging findings. By the end of the course, a CL psychiatrist will be comfortable recommending imaging studies to primary medical teams and discussing their rationale, effectively collaborating with neurology teams, and reviewing neuroradiology to understand possible correlations between findings on imaging and neuropsychiatric symptoms. Throughout the course, a standardized technique on how to review imaging will be taught to identify the most common neuroanatomy involved in neurology and CL psychiatry cases. Correlations of the neuroanatomy to clinical presentation including psychiatric and neurologic symptoms will be solidified by reviewing clinical cases and their imaging. The presentation will use Wi-Fi based polling software to engage the course participants with open-ended and multiple-choice questions. Participants will be asked to identify different areas of the brain and correlate neuroimaging with the associated neurological or psychiatric functions/symptoms of the cases.