Behavioral neurology is a subspecialty of

neurology Neurology (from , "string, nerve" and the suffix wikt:-logia, -logia, "study of") is the branch of specialty (medicine) , medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous syst ...

that studies the impact of

neurological damage Nerve injury is an injury to a nerve. There is no single classification system that can describe all the many variations of nerve injuries. In 1941, Herbert Seddon introduced a classification of nerve injuries based on three main types of nerve ...

and

disease A disease is a particular abnormal condition that adversely affects the structure or function (biology), function of all or part of an organism and is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical condi ...

upon behavior, memory, and cognition, and the treatment thereof. Two fields associated with behavioral neurology are

neuropsychiatry Neuropsychiatry is a branch of medicine that deals with psychiatry as it relates to neurology, in an effort to understand and attribute behavior to the interaction of neurobiology and social psychology factors. Within neuropsychiatry, the mind i ...

and

neuropsychology Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology focus on how injuries or illnesses of the brai ...

. In the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, 'Behavioral Neurology & Neuropsychiatry' has been recognized as a single subspecialty by the United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties (UCNS) since 2004. Syndromes and diseases commonly studied by behavioral neurology include: *

Agraphia Agraphia is an acquired neurological disorder causing a loss in the ability to communicate through writing, either due to some form of motor dysfunction or an inability to spell. The loss of writing ability may present with other language or neuro ...

Agnosia Agnosia is a neurological disorder characterized by an inability to process sensory information. Often there is a loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is neither defective nor i ...

s * Agraphesthesia *

Alexia (acquired dyslexia) Dyslexia (), previously known as word blindness, is a learning disability that affects either reading or writing. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, writ ...

Amnesia Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or brain diseases,Gazzaniga, M., Ivry, R., & Mangun, G. (2009) Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the mind. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. but it can also be temporarily caused by t ...

s *

Anosognosia Anosognosia is a condition in which a person with a disability is cognitively unaware of having it due to an underlying physical condition. Anosognosia results from physiological damage to brain structures, typically to the parietal lobe or a di ...

Aphasia Aphasia, also known as dysphasia, is an impairment in a person's ability to comprehend or formulate language because of dysfunction in specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine, but aph ...

s *

Apraxia Apraxia is a motor disorder caused by damage to the brain (specifically the posterior parietal cortex or corpus callosum), which causes difficulty with motor planning to perform tasks or movements. The nature of the damage determines the di ...

s * Aprosodias *

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, and emotional dysregulation that are excessive and pervasive, impairing in multiple con ...

Autism Autism, also known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing d ...

Dementia Dementia is a syndrome associated with many neurodegenerative diseases, characterized by a general decline in cognitive abilities that affects a person's ability to perform activities of daily living, everyday activities. This typically invo ...

Dyslexia Dyslexia (), previously known as word blindness, is a learning disability that affects either reading or writing. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, wri ...

Epilepsy Epilepsy is a group of Non-communicable disease, non-communicable Neurological disorder, neurological disorders characterized by a tendency for recurrent, unprovoked Seizure, seizures. A seizure is a sudden burst of abnormal electrical activit ...

Hemispatial Neglect Hemispatial neglect is a neuropsychological condition in which, after damage to one hemisphere of the brain (e.g. after a stroke), a deficit in attention and awareness towards the side of space opposite brain damage (contralesional space) is obs ...

Psychosis In psychopathology, psychosis is a condition in which a person is unable to distinguish, in their experience of life, between what is and is not real. Examples of psychotic symptoms are delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized or inco ...

Stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...

Traumatic brain injury A traumatic brain injury (TBI), also known as an intracranial injury, is an injury to the brain caused by an external force. TBI can be classified based on severity ranging from mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI/concussion) to severe traumati ...

History

While descriptions of

behavioral syndromes In behavioral ecology, a behavioral syndrome is a correlated suite of behavioral traits, often (but not always) measured across multiple contexts. The suite of traits that are correlated at the population or species level is considered the behaviora ...

go back to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, it was during the 19th century that behavioral neurology began to arise, first with the primitive localization theories of

Franz Gall Franz Joseph Gall or Franz Josef Gall (; 9 March 175822 August 1828) was a German neuroanatomist, physiologist, and pioneer in the study of the localization of mental functions in the brain. Claimed as the founder of the pseudoscience of phrenol ...

, followed in the mid 19th century by the first localizations in aphasias by

Paul Broca Pierre Paul Broca (, also , , ; 28 June 1824 – 9 July 1880) was a French physician, anatomist and anthropologist. He is best known for his research on Broca's area, a region of the frontal lobe that is named after him. Broca's area is involve ...

and then

Carl Wernicke Carl (or Karl) Wernicke (; ; 15 May 1848 – 15 June 1905) was a German physician, anatomist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist. He is known for his influential research into the pathological effects of specific forms of encephalopathy and also ...

. Localizationist neurology and clinical descriptions reached a peak in the late 19th and early 20th century, with work extending into the clinical descriptions of dementias by

Alois Alzheimer Alois Alzheimer ( , , ; 14 June 1864 – 19 December 1915) was a German psychiatrist, neuropathologist and colleague of Emil Kraepelin. He is credited with identifying the first published case of "presenile dementia", which Kraepelin later ide ...

and

Arnold Pick Arnold Pick (20 July 1851 – 4 April 1924) was a Czech- German psychiatrist. He is known for first describing clinical features of frontotemporal dementia between 1892 and 1906. The disorder he described was given the name ''Pick's disease'' in ...

. The work of

Karl Lashley Karl Spencer Lashley (June 7, 1890 – August 7, 1958) was an American psychologist and behaviorist remembered for his contributions to the study of learning and memory. A ''Review of General Psychology'' survey, published in 2002, ranked Lashley ...

in rats for a time in the early to mid 20th century put a damper on localization theory and lesion models of behavioral function. In the United States, the work of

Norman Geschwind Norman Geschwind (January 8, 1926 – November 4, 1984) was a pioneering American behavioral neurologist, best known for his exploration of behavioral neurology through disconnection models based on lesion analysis. Early life Norman Geschwi ...

led to a renaissance of behavioral neurology. He is famous for his work on disconnection syndromes, aphasia, and behavioral syndromes of limbic epilepsy, also called Geschwind syndrome. Having trained generations of behavioral neurologists (e.g., Antonio Damasio), Geschwind is considered the father of behavioral neurology. The advent of in vivo neuroimaging starting in the 1980s led to a further strengthening of interest in the cognitive neurosciences and provided a tool that allowed for lesion, structural, and functional correlations with behavioral dysfunction in living people.

References

* *Martha J. Farah, Todd E. Feinberg; Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychology; McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing; 1st edition (August 1, 1996) *

External links

Society for Behavioral and Cognitive NeurologyUnited Council for Neurologic Subspecialties
{{Neuroscience Neurology

History

See also

References

External links