Neuropsychology

Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology that aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relates to specific psychological processes.

Approaches

Experimental neuropsychology is an approach which uses methods from experimental psychology to uncover the relationship between the nervous system and cognitive function. The majority of work involves studying healthy humans in a laboratory setting, although a minority of researchers may conduct animal experiments. Human work in this area often takes advantage of specific features of our nervous system (for example that visual information presented to a specific visual field is preferentially processed by the cortical hemisphere on the opposite side) to make links between neuroanatomy and psychological function.

Related Topics:
Experimental neuropsychology - Experimental psychology - Visual field - Cortical - Neuroanatomy

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Clinical neuropsychology is the application of neuropsychological knowledge to the assessment (see neuropsychological test and neuropsychological assessment), management and rehabilitation of people who have suffered illness or injury (particularly to the brain) which has caused neurocognitive problems. In particular they bring a psychological viewpoint to treatment, to understand how such illness and injury may affect, and be affected by psychological factors. Clinical neuropsychologists typically work in hospital settings in an interdisciplinary medical team, although private practice work is not unknown.

Related Topics:
Clinical neuropsychology - Neuropsychological test - Neuropsychological assessment - Rehabilitation - Neurocognitive

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Cognitive neuropsychology is a relatively new development and has emerged as a distillation of the complimentary approaches of both experimental and clinical neuropsychology. It seeks to understand the mind and brain by studying people who have suffered brain injury or neurological illness. This is based on the principle that if a specific cognitive problem can be found after an injury to a specific area of the brain, it is likely that this part of the brain is in some way involved. A more recent but related approach is cognitive neuropsychiatry which seeks to understand the normal function of mind and brain by studying psychiatric or mental illness.

Related Topics:
Cognitive neuropsychology - Cognitive neuropsychiatry - Mental illness

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Connectionism is the use of artificial neural networks to model specific cognitive processes using what are considered to be simplified but plausible models of how neurons operate. Once trained to perform a specific cognitive task these networks are often damaged or 'lesioned' to simulate brain injury or impairment in an attempt to understand and compare the results to the effects of brain injury in humans.

Related Topics:
Connectionism - Artificial neural network

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Functional neuroimaging uses specific brain imaging technologies to take readings from the brain, usually when a person is doing a particular task, in an attempt to understand how the activation of particular brain areas is related to the task. In particular, the growth of methodologies to employ cognitive testing within established functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to study brain-behavior relations is having a notable influence on neuropsychological research.

Related Topics:
Functional neuroimaging - Brain imaging - Functional magnetic resonance imaging - FMRI

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In practice these approaches are not mutually exclusive and most neuropsychologists select the best approach or approaches for the task to be completed.

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