Conceptual And Historical Issues In Neurpsuchology

Question 1

What is neuropsychology?

Answer 1

Study of the relationship between brain and behaviour
Interested in how brain injury/damage changes behaviour and cognition (could be developmental as well as injury)
Focus on the organisation of brain functions

Question 2

What was the Ancient Egyptian view?

Answer 2

Edwin smith papyrus = series of case studies detailing head and neck trauma experience by soldiers after battle
First documented evidence of brain injury analysis
Demonstrates physicians were recognising importance of brain as the cause of disruptions to cognitive and behavioural processes

Question 3

What was the Greek view?

Answer 3

Debate over which organ had primary importance as the basis of the ‘mind’ or ‘soul’
3 key figures:
- Hippocrates; brain as primary organ of importance
- Plato; brain and heart work in combination
- Aristotle; heart more important than brain

Galen - interested in movement and sensation
L> work on animal reflexes highlighted importance of brain and nerves over the heart and veins

Question 4

What happened in the 17/18th centuries?

Answer 4

Beginning to move away from view that ventricles were most important brain structure (cortex)
Discovery of grey (synapses) and white (myelin sheath) matter

Question 5

What happened in the 19th century?

Answer 5

Specific areas of brain carry out specific functions
Focus on language processing - aphasic patients (disruption of language process not loss of language) identified as having similarly located lesions upon autopsy
Specific to left hemisphere - Broca and Wernicke

Question 6

What happened in the 20th century?

Answer 6

Double dissociation - 2 groups of patients perform differently on 2 separate behavioural tasks, usually the 2 groups have different types of brain lesions
Equipotentiality - brain functions as ‘undifferentiated whole’ - multiple brain regions involved in all cognitive tasks, extent of damage not location that determines how much function is lost
Emergence of cognitive neuropsychology - with info processing models used in cognitive psychology to explain deficits caused by brain injury

Question 7

What is current in 21st century?

Answer 7

Models of brain function can be developed through combining multiple imaging studies of patients with lesions and healthy brains
Enhances understanding of cognitive processes eg. language
Enables more precise understanding of functional specialisation in specific areas of cortex
Brain stimulation can mimic lesions in healthy brains
Neuroimaging can match lesions with symptoms at micro-structural level; voxel based symptom lesion mapping
Computational models developed from data to predict severity of cognitive deficits after brain injury