Neuropsychological Assessment of Neuropsychiatric Disorders
Neuropsychological Assessment of Neuropsychiatric Disorders, 2nd edition
Igor Grant, Kenneth M. Adams, editors
New York: Oxford University Press; 1996. 654 pp. with index
ISBN 0-19-509073-X
The remarkable increase in the number of textbooks in neuropsychology is a reflection of the growing importance of the discipline, both in science and in applied health care. In this large field of contenders for readership, this volume is a welcome contribution to the literature. The well-written and comprehensive first edition has been extensively revised and now includes such timely topics as the psycho-social consequences of neuropsychological impairment. The editors, Igor Grant and Kenneth Adams, both highly thought-of opinion leaders in their respective fields of neuropsychiatry and neuropsychology, have pooled their areas of expertise to ensure that this text is a comprehensive as well as a scholarly summary of the current knowledge. The contributing authors are a refreshing mix of well-known names and more junior academics, a combination explicitly acknowledged as an attempt to “keep the treatment of topics fresh.”
The volume is organized into sections. Section 1 reviews methods of comprehensive neuropsychological assessment. The lead-off chapter discusses the Halstead Reitan Battery in a comprehensive but slightly cumbersome way. While useful, the material on the historical context could be reduced. The next chapter, on the analytical approach to neuropsychological assessment, provides conceptual background to theory-based clinical decision trees, while the Boston process and the Iowa-Benton school provide a very practically oriented review of these approaches to neuropsychological assessment. Computers in memory adds an interesting, frequently neglected component to this review. The chapter on cognitive screening methods rounds out the first section and provides a much-needed review of this area, but could have taken a slightly more practical angle, rather than concentrating extensively on conceptual considerations.
The second section, on neuropsychiatric disorders, constitutes the bulk of the book. The reader is led through all major areas of this cluster of disorders, starting with the important issues of demographic influences on test performance to the neuropsychology of dementia and to drug abuse and schizophrenia. While all of these chapters provide important background information, they tend to overlap thematicalry. In particular, the overview of dementia
includes appropriately significant background on various dementing disorders in the context of memory dysfunction, which is again reviewed thematically in the chapters on Huntington’s and Parkinson’s disease. Interestingly, while these diseases, along with epilepsy, Tourette’s syndrome and hypoxia, are given separate chapters, the disease accounting for more than 50% of all dementia cases — Alzheimer’s disease — did not did rate a separate chapter. An important contribution is made by the chapter on the neuropsychology of memory dysfunction, which provides the reader with a careful review of memory systems and the often-confusing taxonomy in this context. The third section, on the psychosocial consequences of neuropsychological impairment, introduces an important and very timely topic; namely, the noncognitive issues in traumatic brain injury, including the controversial issue of malingering. The book deserves praise for tackling the difficult topic of quality of life, both in the context of head injury and of systemic illness. Both chapters raise important and often-neglected issues; they will sensitize the reader to the significance of these topics. This important volume will serve both advanced students and clinicians alike for many years to come.