Bücher der Reihe Critical Issues in Neuropsychology

Historically, relatively few investigations in neuropsychology have been sensitive to the analysis of cultural variables. This handbook will assist the neuropsychologist interested in cultural competence and help increase understanding of the link between cultural competence in assessment and intervention and good treatment outcomes.

This volume provides comprehensive coverage of interventions for emotional and behavioral problems following all types of brain illnesses and injuries in adults. It takes neuropsychotherapy outside the clinic to the real life situations and dilemmas of people with brain illnesses.

While conducting research on intellectual and neuropsychological perfonnance of various patient populations across time, we became aware of the lack of information concerning practice effects associated with many widely used assessment instruments.

The explosion of research in this area since the publication of the first edition in 1989, has been incorporated, including a greatly expanded chapter on child assessment instruments. This volume is a must for the bookshelf of every clinical neuropsychologist as well as researchers and students.

This work is an effort to provide a comprehensive review of what we know about certain of these disorders, specifically: language-based learning disorders; nonverbal learning disorders; and mathematics disorders and how they manifest themselves in the later years of development and maturity.

We anticipate that these tests and norms will be particularly useful in the neuropsychological evaluation of Spanish speakers, especially those with limited educational attainment, and the elderly.

This volume reflects, in part, an update of Clinical Application of Neuropsycho logical Test Batteries, edited by Theresa Incagnoli, Gerald Goldstein, and Charles Golden some 10 years ago.

The growth of clinical neuropsychology has been unprecedented. Despite these attacks, clinical neuropsychology con tinues to enjoy exceptional growth within psychology and acceptance by other health practitioners, insurance companies, legislators, judges, juries, and above all, consumers of our services.

Smith and Godfrey have provided a useful service for family members by summarizing important neuropsychological changes associated with TBI and providing practical guidelines for coping with these problems.

They discuss a wide range of disorders, including areas of recent research - such as frontal lobe dementias and the neuropsychological aspects of late life depression - and clinical problems typically given insufficient consideration in other works, such as seizure disorder, head injury, and mental retardation.

This is the first volume to integrate neuropsychology and behavior therapy into a comprehensive, cohesive assessment and treatment methodology. Of particular value is a discussion of how to integrate multiple sources of information and criteria for selecting treatment techniques.

Neuropsychologists have an important role in potentiating the psychosocial adjustment and quality of life of patients through effective diagnosis and rehabilitation of cognitive and psychomotor deficits caused by acute and chronic disease. This volume contains a review of the literature pertaining to the cognition and medical diseases.

The Practice of Forensic Neuropsychology focuses the awareness of neuropsychologists on the critical areas of forensic practice that should be considered during each phase of a scientific neuropsychological examination/investigation.

This book is the outcome of a decade of research on the neu­ roanatomical mechanisms of learning in the young laboratory rat. It is essentially a discourse on the functional organization of the brain in relation to problem-solving ability and intelli­ gence. During the period between 1980 and 1989, well over 1000 weanling albino rats were subjected to localized brain damage (or sham operations in the case of the controls) under deep anesthesia and aseptic surgical conditions, were allowed tore­ cover, and subsequently were tested on a wide variety of prob­ lems designed to measure general learning ability. Since vir­ tually every part of the brain rostral to the medulla has been explored with lesions, it has become possible not only to map a number of "putative" brain systems underlying the acquisition of distinctive problem-solving tasks, but to isolate several neu­ roanatomical mechanisms that appear to be selectively in­ volved in the acquisition of particular kinds of goal-directed learned activities. Of particular interest was the discovery of a "nonspecific mechanism" (previously referred to in our re­ search reports as the "general learning system") inhabiting the interior parts of the brain. One objective of this volume was to make these maps available in a single source. Another was to provide a descrip­ tion of learning syndromes arising from local lesions to differ­ ent parts of the brain.

However, the primary focus of 19th and early 20th century psychology was on "general psychology," and only a small number of psychologists ventured into what then was called "differential psychology" (the psychology of individual dif ferences) including a few who became attached to neurological research and rehabilitation units after World War I.

This was an exciting project to work on, and I attempted to obtain a broad sampling of current research on the neuropsychology of epilepsy. The three major topics are the nature of epilepsy, cognitive and emotional consequences of epilepsy, and treatment approaches to epilepsy and outcome.

Providing a thorough collection of information regarding clinical aspects of head injury from acute care to recovery, this treatise interrelates a variety of neural specialties and broadens the rehabilitation process to include the family.

Researchers who were influenced by Dr. Nelson Butters contribute articles to this volume to honor him and his thirty-year career. Their contributions reflect how Dr. Butters impacted their current work and offer an historical account of research theory and paradigmatic shifts within the field of cognitive neuropsychology.

For example, multidisciplinary teams that assess, diagnose, and treat mental health disorders in elderly patients are incomplete without clinical psychologists and neuropsy chologists, and yet there is barely a handful of clinical psychologists trained in dealing with geriatric patients.

Indeed, it came as quite a surprise when one day I came across the journal Brain as I was browsing through the periodicals section of the library.

The Practice of Forensic Neuropsychology focuses the awareness of neuropsychologists on the critical areas of forensic practice that should be considered during each phase of a scientific neuropsychological examination/investigation.

The authors describe what types of neurological damage are associated with specific types of cognitive/emotional dysfunction and in turn with specific types ofbehavioral dysfunction, thereby demonstrating how the choice ofbehavioral treatment is guided by the neurological and subjective assessment.