Neuropsychiatry Division

The Beth K. and Stuart C. Yudofsky Division of Neuropsychiatry provides a context for the advancement of neuropsychiatric research, training, and practice at the Baylor College of Medicine and its affiliates in the Texas Medical Center. This endeavor was made possible in the spring of 2011 through the generous support of an anonymous donor who provided an endowment that facilitated the creation of the division and ensures its future growth and success.

The Beth K. and Stuart C. Yudofsky Division of Neuropsychiatry is dedicated to improving the lives of persons and families affected by neuropsychiatric conditions through clinical care, research, education, and community service as our mission.

We strive to be the premier neuropsychiatry program in the United States and an internationally-recognized center of excellence in neuropsychiatry as our vision.

The division is bringing in world-class experts in the field who can address neuropsychiatric disorders from clinical and research perspectives. These experts will develop programs within the division focused on General Neuropsychiatry and Trauma Neuropsychiatry. View information on these programs. 

Neuropsychiatry is a transdisciplinary field of scientific study that encompasses the medical neurosciences (such as neurology, psychiatry) and conceptually adjacent portions of related fields. In this formulation, neuropsychiatry encompasses a broad range of scientific disciplines seeking to understand the neural bases of cognition, emotion, behavior, and sensorimotor function. In this view, one need not be a ‘neuropsychiatrist’ in order to be engaged in work that is correctly described as ‘neuropsychiatric.’ This ‘big tent’ understanding of neuropsychiatry drives the division to engage potential faculty members and collaborators from across the clinical and basic neurosciences and from a broad range of clinical and research disciplines.

Neuropsychiatry is a also philosophical approach to the study of brain behavior relationships in health and disease that draws principally on a ‘type physicalist’ (and, more specifically, a reductive materialist) view of mind-brain. This philosophical perspective is foundational for the division’s faculty in their clinical, research, educational, and community service endeavors.

The merger of neuropsychiatry with behavioral neurology in 2004 under the auspices of the United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties created the medical subspecialty, Behavioral Neurology & Neuropsychiatry. Practitioners in this field provide care to persons with cognitive, emotional, and behavioral manifestations of central nervous system disorder. Subspecialists in Behavioral Neurology & Neuropsychiatry also study the neurology of psychiatric disorders.