The WVU Medicine Children’s Neuroscience Center brings together all the neuroscience disciplines to optimize care for children with neurological disease and disorders - not just neurosurgery or neurology, but behavioral medicine, physical medicine, dietary, and developmental pediatrics. Additionally, our collaboration with top experts across these disciplines allows us to offer comprehensive care for children with brain, spine, and nerve conditions.
Neuroscience Center Programs and Services
Our Neuroscience Center of Excellence brings together the medical, surgical, and support services your child may need to live well with their condition. These include:
- Neurology: Our comprehensive pediatric neurology program provides expert clinical care for children with conditions such as epilepsy, headache, muscle and nerve disorders, multiple sclerosis and pediatric stroke, among others many others.
- Neurosurgery: Our neurosurgeons perform a broad range of brain, spine, and nerve procedures, including less-invasive options that may help your child recover more quickly.
- Neurodevelopmental Center: We help children with certain physical and mental disabilities meet their developmental milestones.
- Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry: A department within the WVU Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute, we focus on treating the whole child, including mental and physical health in a safe and compassionate environment.
Why Choose Our Neuroscience Center
When your child is suffering from a condition affecting their neurologic function or their growth and development, you want answers. Our team of experts can help you find them. As West Virginia’s flagship Children’s Hospital, we are home to the largest, most experienced team of pediatric neurological specialists in the state.
Since no two children are exactly alike, we have assembled a comprehensive team who work together to evaluate each unique situation and create an individualized care treatment plan that meets your child’s needs.
Families trust us with their child’s care because we offer:
- Disease-specific clinics: To help streamline care for kids with certain complex conditions, we’ve pulled together all the specialists and services they may need in one location. We have separate multispecialty clinics for patients with epilepsy, cerebral palsy, headaches, multiple sclerosis, neuromuscular disorders, and more.
- Unmatched epilepsy care: Our Neuroscience Center includes West Virginia’s only pediatric epilepsy monitoring unit. This is an important diagnostic tool for children with hard-to-treat (refractory) epilepsy. It also allows us to pinpoint where in the brain seizures occur — then treat that target area. We also offer the most advanced pediatric epilepsy surgeries, including MRI-guided laser ablation and neuromodulation including vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) placement and responsive neurostimulation (RNS) implantation.
- West Virginia’s only pediatric neuroimmunology clinic: We offer unique expertise in autoimmune diseases that attack the brain and spinal cord, including neurosarcoidosis and Anti-MOG antibody syndrome. Not only can we properly diagnose these rare conditions, but we also offer exciting new treatments that help preserve brain cells while preventing relapses or flare-ups.
- Advanced surgery options: Our neurosurgeons have experience performing nearly every type of brain and spine procedure. This includes spina bifida repair, ventricular shunt placement, craniofacial reconstruction, and endoscopic techniques that let us remove pituitary tumors through the nose.
- Genetic testing and counseling: Many neurological disorders are caused by a gene mutation that can run in families. Our neurogenetic program serves children and families who have, or are at risk for, hereditary conditions such as spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), craniosynostosis, and Fragile X syndrome. Knowing your child’s family history and genetic profile helps us customize their care.
- Access to research: Families who want to give their child the opportunity to test promising new treatments for neurological disorders have access to clinical trials.
