Description: Since its origin in the 1960s, cognitive neuropsychology has come to represent the leading edge of research into brain-behavior relationships. Just as particle physicists search for the fundamental building blocks of matter, cognitive neuropsychologists and cognitive psychologists strive to define the fundamental components of human intelligence. The goal of this book is to introduce cognitive neuropsychology to a broad audience of clinicians and researchers. Sufficient introductory material is provided for readers who are interested in disorders of higher cortical function, but have little background in psychology. However, each topic is also explored in enough depth to serve as a reference for professionals in the field, with full descriptions of the vocabulary, theoretical framework, and information-processing models of cognitive psychology and how they are applied to specific disorders. Each chapter provides an overview of the disorder being discussed, develops a rationale for selecting the stimulus materials, and demonstrates how a given patient's deficits can be understood in terms of a breakdown in one or more cognitive domains. The contributors offer step-by-step clinically oriented guidelines for disorders of attention, memory, language, spatial intelligence, calculation, motor control, and artistic ability. A final chapter shows how this cognitive approach to studying behavior is being coupled with neuroimaging techniques to expand our knowledge of the neurobiological substrates of human intelligence.

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