Behavioral neurology is a subspecialty of
neurology
Neurology (from el, wikt:νεῦρον, νεῦρον (neûron), "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 co ...
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
Neuropsychiatry or Organic Psychiatry 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 neurop ...
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 primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, '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:
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Agraphia
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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
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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 ...
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Alexia (acquired dyslexia)
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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
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Anosognosia
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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 t ...
s
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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 disorde ...
s
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Aprosodias
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Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by excessive amounts of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity that are pervasive, impairing in multiple contexts, and otherwise age-inappr ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Dyslexia
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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 electrical ...
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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 observ ...
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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 behavior ...
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Stroke
A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...
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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 b ...
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 behavi ...
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 ea ...
, 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
Karl Spencer Lashley (June 7, 1890 – August 7, 1958) was a 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 as the 61 ...
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 neurology, behavioral neurologist, best known for his exploration of behavioral neurology through disconnection models based on lesion analysis.
Earl ...
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
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Behavioral neuroscience
References
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*Martha J. Farah, Todd E. Feinberg; Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychology; McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing; 1st edition (August 1, 1996)
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External links
Society for Behavioral and Cognitive NeurologyUnited Council for Neurologic Subspecialties
{{Neuroscience
Neurology