The Neuropsychology of Mental Illness

Describes neuropsychological approaches to the investigation, description, measurement and management of a wide range of mental illnesses.

Stephen J. Wood (Edited by), Nicholas B. Allen (Edited by), Christos Pantelis (Edited by)

9780521862899, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 October 2009

464 pages, 25 b/w illus. 11 colour illus. 8 tables
25.2 x 19.6 x 2.5 cm, 1.16 kg

'… as a practical resource for how to use and make sense of neuropsychology in psychiatry, it is indispensable.' British Journal of Psychiatry

It is widely accepted that most psychiatric disorders are associated with cognitive impairment and that neuropsychological approaches can help unravel the mechanisms underlying brain function and help us develop a better understanding of these disorders. In this book, a panel of the world's leading experts describe the development of neuropsychological approaches to the investigation, description, measurement and management of a wide range of mental illnesses. Part One explains the rationale for examining neuropsychological processes within clinical disorders, leading into Part Two summarizing and critiquing the methodological approaches to study. Part Three covers each of the major psychiatric disorders and provides a summary of the neuropsychological findings for each condition. The final section brings together the perspectives of neuroscientists, psychiatrists and philosophers. Essential reading for all those studying the healthy as well as the disordered brain, The Neuropsychology of Mental Illness will appeal to specialists from the fields of mental health, psychology, clinical neuroscience and philosophy.

Dedication
Foreword
Preface
List of contributors
Part I. Neuropsychological Processes: 1. Developmental neuropsychology: normative trajectories and risk for psychiatric illness
2. Processes and mechanisms in neuropsychiatry: sensory-perceptual
3. Processes and mechanisms in neuropsychiatry: motor-executive processes
4. The neurobiology of the emotion response: perception, experience, and regulation
5. Frontal asymmetry in emotion, personality and psychopathology: methodological issues in electrocortical and hemodynamic neuroimaging
6. Approaches to understanding language dysfunction in neuropsychiatric disorders: insights from the study of schizophrenia
7. Associative memory
8. The neural basis of attention
9. The role of executive functions in psychiatric disorders
10. Decision-making
11. The neuropsychology of social cognition: implications for psychiatric disorders
Part II. The Importance of Methods: 12. Psychiatric diagnoses: purposes, limitations and an alternative approach
13. Neuropsychological methods in mental disorders research: illustrations from methamphetamine dependence
14. The study of emotion and the interaction between emotion and cognition: methodological perspectives
15. Neurophysiology: using neurophysiological techniques to study auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia
16. Neuroimaging
17. Psychopharmacological modeling of psychiatric illness
18. Cognitive phenomics
Part III. The Neuropsychology of Psychiatric Disorders: 19. Neuropsychology of ADHD and other disorders of childhood
20. A multidimensional neurobehavioral model of personality disorders
21. Neuropsychology in eating disorders
22. Neurobiological and neuropsychological pathways into substance use and addictive behaviour
23. Neuropsychology of obsessive-compulsive disorder
24. Neuropsychological investigation in mood disorders
25. Manic distractibility and processing efficiency in bipolar disorder
26. Schizophrenia
Part IV. Integration and Synthesis: Are Mental Illnesses Disorders of Consciousness? A Trialogue between Neuroscientific, Philosophical, and Psychiatric Perspectives: 27. Mental illness and the consciousness thesis
28. A nonreductive physicalist account of affective consciousness
29. Consciousness of oneself and others in relation to mental disorders
30. Trialogue: commentaries on 'are mental illnesses disorders of consciousness?' Comments on Panksepp and on Vogeley and Newen
Affective consciousness and the psychiatric comfort zones of experienced life
The definition and the constitution of mental disorders and the role of neural dysfunctions
Response to commentaries
Understanding affects: toward a neurobiology of primary process mentalities
Replies to comments by Jaak Panksepp and by G. Lynn Stephens and George Graham.

Subject Areas: Clinical psychology [MMJ], Psychiatry [MMH]