Neuropsychology

Dahlia W. Zaidel

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780080926681
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Neuropsychology
• Index: Psychology

The field of neuropsychology has grown rapidly in recently years. New developments have been of interest across disciplines to cognitive, clinical, and experimental psychologists as well as neuroscientists.

Neuropsychology presents a comprehensive overview of where the field stands now relative to all these disciplines. Representing the critical areas in human neuropsychology, this book begins with the history and development of the field and proceeds to discuss brain structure and function with regard to attention, perception, emotion, language, and movement.

• Provides a comprehensive literature review
• Chapters represent the critical areas in human neuropsychology
• Organized for ease of use and reference
• Contributors from medicine, experimental, cognitive, and clinical psychology

CHAPTER 1

History of Neuropsychology

Stanley Finger

Publisher Summary

This chapter presents an overview of the history of neuropsychology. In the post-Renaissance era, the words neurology and psychology, from which the term neuropsychology is derived, were introduced. In his Cerebri anatome of 1664, Thomas Willis (1621–1675), the most outstanding anatomist of the time, presented the word neurology in Greek. With the passage of time, the terms neurology and psychology, Willis’s doctrines of the nerves and the soul, respectively, became a part of the common vocabulary. However, as the years passed, these words also took on new meanings. Lashley used neuropsychology in the context of brain damage and behavior in a 1936 presentation before the Boston Society of Psychiatry and Neurology. His Boston address appeared in print in 1937. However, Lashley was not the first to use this compound word. It had been used in 1913 by William Osier (1849–1919) in a published speech dealing with training at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Osier mentioned neuropsychology in the context of students being able to take specialized courses dealing with the so-called mental disorders. Nevertheless, he did not take the time to define his new word and presented it only in passing.

I ROOTS OF THE WORD NEUROPSYCHOLOGY

In the post-Renaissance era, the words neurology and psychology, from which the term neuropsychology is derived, were introduced. In his Cerebri anatome of 1664, Thomas Willis (1621–1675), the most outstanding anatomist of the time, presented the word neurology in Greek. Willis based the prefix of his new word on the Greek word for sinew or tendon, and applied the term to the peripheral and autonomic nerves, but not to the brain or spinal cord. In his 1681 translation of Willis’s works, Samuel Pordage (1633–1691?) translated the Greek word for neurology into neurologie and defined the term as the doctrine of the nerves.

The word psychologia, in contrast, was used prior to the time of Willis. It may have been coined by Rudolf Goclenius (Goclenio; 1547–1628) in the 1590s. Goclenius employed the Latin word in the title of his moralistic book, Psychologia: hoc est, De hominis perfectione, which can be translated as Psychology: Or on the Improvement of Man (1594).

In De anima brutorum, Willis’s Latin text of 1672, the Greek word for psychologia was used with some frequency. In 1683, Samuel Pordage translated this volume into Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes, presented the Old English word psycheology, and defined this word as the doctrine of the soul. This was probably the first time that the word that would become shortened to psychology appeared in print in the English language (Cranefield, 1961; Spillane, 1981).

With the passage of time, the terms neurology and psychology, Willis’s doctrines of the nerves and the soul, respectively, became a part of the common vocabulary. But as the years passed, these words also took on new meanings. At present, neurology usually refers to the branch of medicine that deals with the nervous system and its disorders, whereas psychology has been defined as the study of behavior or the mind, rather than the soul.

Many terms have been derived from the words neurology and psychology. One, the subject of this chapter, is neuropsychology, a word sometimes attributed to the famous American experimentalist, Karl Lashley (1890–1958; see Cobb, Hisaw, Stevens, & Boring, 1959). Lashley used neuropsychology in the context of brain damage and behavior in a 1936 presentation before the Boston Society of Psychiatry and Neurology. His Boston address appeared in print in 1937.

Lashley was not, however, the first to use this compound word (Bruce, 1985). It had been used in 1913 by William Osler (1849–1919) in a published speech dealing with training at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Osler mentioned “neuro-psychology” in the context of students being able to take specialized courses dealing with so-called mental disorders. Nevertheless, he did not take the time to define his new word, and presented it only in passing.

Another person who used the word neuropsychology before Karl Lashley was Kurt Goldstein (1878–1965), the German-born neuropsychiatrist who emigrated to the United States (Frommer & Smith, 1988). Goldstein employed it in his 1934 classic, Der Aufbau des Organismus, a work that would become well known to many people under its English title, The Organism (1939). The latter bore the suitable subtitle, A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man. In his insightful book, Goldstein (p. 365) presented the term “neuropsychological” when introducing the topic of aberrant thought processes in patients suffering from brain damage.

Lashley cited Goldstein’s 1934 book in 1936/1937, in the same sentence in which he first spoke about neuropsychology. Nevertheless, Lashley did not credit Goldstein or anyone else with the word. But the fact that Lashley did not use the word before 1936, and now used it when citing Goldstein’s thought, makes it very likely that he took the word from Goldstein, rather than from Osler, even though he had been in residence at Johns Hopkins when Osler gave his 1913 address.

Because Osler viewed mental disorders as brain diseases, he, Goldstein, and Lashley all looked up neuropsychology as the study of higher functions following brain injuries or diseases. At the present time, neuropsychology still deals largely with the study of higher functions and their disturbances after brain insult, although some definitions of neuropsychology may encompass more than just aberrant behaviors. Furthermore, although most individuals who call themselves neuropsychologists are professionals involved with assessing and treating human patients (i.e., clinical neuropsychology), there has also been a growing branch of neuropsychology concerned with hard-core experimentation, including the use of laboratory animal models (i.e., experimental neuropsychology).

II NEUROPSYCHOLOGY AND THE EARLY HISTORY OF LOCALIZATION THEORY

Whether neuropsychology is defined narrowly or broadly, its history can be linked to changing concepts of localization of function (Benton, 1988). This is the idea that different parts of the brain are specialized to contribute to behavior in different ways. Given that people have attempted to localize higher functions and to treat intellectual and related disturbances during the Greco-Roman period, one can say that neuropsychology, or at least its theoretical backbone, has well over a 2000-yr-old history.

In ancient Greece, opinions about the function of the brain were far from uniform. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), the greatest of the Greek naturalist-philosophers, believed the heart controlled sensory, cognitive, and related higher functions, and that the cool brain simply tempered “the heat and seething” of the heart. In contrast, Democritus (ca. 460–370 B.C.) and Plato (ca. 429–348 B.C.), both of whom achieved great stature before the time of Aristotle, were more modern in believing that intellectual or rational functions belonged not in the heart, but in the head.

Aristotle’s tremendous influence notwithstanding, by the time of the Roman Empire, most behavioral functions were associated with the brain. The major exceptions were the passions and desires, still tied by most individuals to the liver and the heart.

The most important medical figure during this era was Galen (A.D. 130–200). Born in Pergamon, educated in Alexandria, and physician to emperors in Rome, Galen suggested that the front of the brain received sensory impressions, whereas the cerebellar area was responsible for motor functions. His reasoning rested largely on attempts to trace the nerves and the premise that the anterior region was softer than the posterior region, thus being better able to receive and record sensory impressions. In De usu partium he wrote:

In substance the encephalon is very like the nerves, of which it was meant to be the source, except that it is softer, and this was proper for a part that w...