Neuropsychology Central

[pippi_jo]

Hello everybody
This is my first post on this site. It may seem like a stupid question, especially coming from a psych student but i was wondering how knowing neuroanatomy can help neuropsychologists in their line of work?
As far as CVA's go, i guess knowing where the arteries lie would help in respect to what damage to expect if an occlusion or haemorrhage occured. It's going to be a question on my final neuropsych paper and i'm running out of ideas ! Any help anyone could give me would be great!!
Pip.
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Neuropsych Student.

[Helix]

Hello pipi_jo,

as you will certainly know, neuropsychology is the science of how human behaviour is caused by processes in the brain (cognitive neuropsychology), how these processes are effected by lesions of the brain and how to therapize people with brain damage (clinical neuropsychology). The brain forms neural networks, in which different brain regions interact with each other in order to cause this or that behaviour. By studying neuroanatomy, the clinical neuropsychologist can form hypothesis regarding underlying brain pathology in a person presenting with, let's say, a memory disorder that makes it impossible for the person to recollect what has been said 15 minutes ago. Alternatively, one can form hypothesis about which behavioural disturbances are to be expected in someone with a damage to the medial temporal lobe including the hippocampus (e.g. a memory disorder that makes it impossible for the person to recollect what...). The cognitive neuropsychology (don't regard the clinical vs cogntive thing as a strict segregation) is a branch of neuroscience and, therefore, people in the field are by their very nature interested in neuroanatomy. Many of them are eager to map cognitive functions to specific regions of the brain or specific neural networks, something known as localism.

So, what's interesting to neuropsychologists about anatomy is not so much what surrounds the brain, like arteries and different skin-layers etc. (although one must have some basic knowledge), but the anatomy of the brain itself and especially with regard to what these regions do in terms of cognitive functions. This, then, is called functional neuroanatomy.

Bye,
Helix