Behavioral neurology is a subspecialty of
neurology
Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal ...
that studies the impact of neurological damage and disease upon behavior, memory, and cognition, and the treatment thereof. Two fields associated with behavioral neurology are
neuropsychiatry 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 often focus on how injuries or illnesses of t ...
. In the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
, '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 neur ...
*
Agnosia
Agnosia is the 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 not defective nor is there any significant memory loss. It is usually ...
s
*
Agraphesthesia Agraphesthesia is a disorder of directional cutaneous kinesthesia or a disorientation of the skin's sensation across its space. It is a difficulty recognizing a written number or letter traced on the skin after parietal damage.
Causes
Agraphest ...
*
Alexia (acquired dyslexia)
Dyslexia, also known until the 1960s as word blindness, is a disorder characterized by reading below the expected level for one's age. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, r ...
*
Amnesia
Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or disease,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 caused temporarily by the use ...
s
*
Anosognosia
Anosognosia is a condition in which a person with a disability is cognitively unaware of having it due to an underlying physical or psychological (e.g., PTSD, Stockholm syndrome, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, dementia) condition. Anosognosia ...
*
Aphasia
Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in ...
s
*
Apraxias
*
Aprosodias
*
Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder
*
Autism
The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...
*
Dementia
Dementia is a disorder which manifests as a set of related symptoms, which usually surfaces when the brain is damaged by injury or disease. The symptoms involve progressive impairments in memory, thinking, and behavior, which negatively affe ...
*
Dyslexia
Dyslexia, also known until the 1960s as word blindness, is a disorder characterized by reading below the expected level for one's age. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, r ...
*
Epilepsy
Epilepsy is a group of non-communicable neurological disorders characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures can vary from brief and nearly undetectable periods to long periods of vigorous shaking due to abnormal electrica ...
*
Hemispatial Neglect
*
Psychosis
Psychosis is a condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not real. Symptoms may include delusions and hallucinations, among other features. Additional symptoms are incoherent speech and behavi ...
*
Stroke
A stroke is a disease, medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemorr ...
*
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 TBI/concussionto severe traumatic br ...
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 behavio ...
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 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 phrenology, Gall was an ...
, 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 and neuropathologist and a colleague of Emil Kraepelin. Alzheimer is credited with identifying the first published case of "presenile dementia", which Kraep ...
and
Arnold Pick
Arnold Pick (20 July 18514 April 1924) was a Jewish Czech psychiatrist. He is known for identifying the clinical syndrome of Pick's disease and the Pick bodies that are characteristic of the disorder. He was the first to name reduplicative param ...
. The work of
Karl 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 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.
See also
*
Behavioral neuroscience
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