Publications | News | Search | Contact Us

Home | Testing Services | What is Neuropsychology?

What is Neuropsychology?

Neuropsychology is a scientific discipline that studies the relationship between brain structures and functions to include affect, cognition and behavior. It focuses on studying brain impairment with a view to understanding normal psychological function and to developing rehabilitation procedures and treatments for brain deficits.

Neuropsychology is a young field with roots dating back to 1848 with the study of Phineas Gage and the 1861 post-mortem study of an aphasic patient by Paul Broca. Neuropsychology made its entry in the clinical field only in 1953, with patient HM, who underwent surgical treatment of epilepsy, which resulted in a selective amnesia (memory loss). On the basis of such studies the modern science of neuropsychology emerged during the 1960s along side with behavioral neurology. 

Neuropsychologists tend to work in academia (involved in basic or clinical research), clinical settings (involved in assessing or treating patients with neuropsychological problems), forensic settings (assessing people for legal reasons or appearing in court as expert witness) or industry (as consultants where neuropsychological knowledge is applied to product design or in the management of pharmaceutical clinical-trials research for drugs that might have a potential impact on CNS functioning).

As a discipline neuropsychology is one of the more eclectic of the psychological disciplines, overlapping with areas such as neuroscience, philosophy, neurology, psychiatry and computer science. It employs a scientific method for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on the proposal of hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and the design of experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results. The process is objective to reduce biased interpretations of the results.

In its clinical applications neuropsychology uses standardized assessment tools to measure cognitive and psychological functions in individuals. The use of such instruments allows direct comparison of an individual’s performance to that of others of same gender and age and (often) same education level. Clinical neuropsychologists undergo extensive interdisciplinary specialized training, which includes studies in neuroanatomy, neurology, and neurophysiology in addition to general psychology courses and practice. The combination of inter-disciplinary training and use of standardized measures allows for remarkable diagnostic sophistication.

Neuropsychological testing is more sensitive to the presence of neurological problems (that is, is more likely to detect a problem) than brain imaging studies or neurological or psychiatric interviews alone. It is also more specific in that it allows for fine-grain measurements of a person's specific skills and weaknesses, thus allowing for individually tailored treatments and interventions.