Book Review: Handbook of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology

Cognitive neuropsychology has become mainstream. Over the past twenty years, studies of patients with cognitive deficits following selective brain lesions have moved, first from the research forum through to undergraduate option courses, and now through to forming a cornerstone of most core courses in cognitive psychology. Any students worth their salt need to know about neuropsychological disorders of immediate memory in order to understand the relations between immediate memory and long-term memory; likewise any student of visual object recognition needs to know about the different forms of visual agnosia, and any student of reading needs to know about the varieties of acquired dyslexias. The reason for this is that neuropsychological disorders provide an important source of evidence on the functional organization of cognition. They can tell us which processes are functionally isolatable and which are not. They can also be informative about the neural substrates of cognition, where studies relate cognitive disorder to the underlying lesion site. For teachers of cognition, neuropsychology is important for giving a human face to abstract mechanism. There are already several good textbooks of neuropsychology, some tending to stress the more “neuro” end of the discipline (e.g., Heilman & Valenstein, 1993; Kolb & Wishaw, 1996), some stressing more “cognitive” aspects of disorders (e.g., Ellis & Young, 1995; Parkin, 1996), and some of which cover both aspects (McCarthy & Warrington, 1990). The Handbook of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, as indicated by its title, attempts to provide a review of neuropsychological disorders and their relation to cognitive theory. It is a solely Italian enterprise, consisting of reviews from Italian researchers. Neuropsychology has long enjoyed a high profile in Italy, and Italian neuropscyhologists have typically tried to combine interests in clinical issues with an interest in cognitive mechanisms–-a combined perspective that is wholly appropriate to the goals of the Handbook. The book is perhaps unique in the extent of its coverage and in trying to provide a methodological overview as well as theoretical and clinical perspectives on neuropsychological impairments. In providing reviews by individual experts on each topic, issues are dealt with in sufficient detail to be useful to researchers as well as students. Though the text is probably too large and expensive to be recommended for student purchase, the book should nevertheless provide an invaluable reference source for students and researchers alike. The main sections of the Handbook provide an indication of its scope. There are sections on: (1) methodological problems in neuropsychology (though why “problems” as opposed to “issues” is not clear); (2) language disorders; (3) memory disorders; (4) recognition disorders; (5) movement disorders; (6) spatial disorders; (7) attentional disorders; (8) “special syndromes” (number processing, emotional disturbances, disconnection syndromes, consciousness); (9) dementia; and (10) recovery of functions. The book deals with all major neuropsychological syndromes and includes some that are little discussed in most texts (e.g., in the section on “Attentional disorders” there is a chapter on “Acute confusional state”–-a disorder described in most depth by Geschwind in 1982 but given scant attention since). As is likely to happen with a text of this breadth, to which multiple authors have contributed, there is some variance in the quality of the chapters. However, there are excellent contributions by Semenza on “Lexical-semantic disorders”, by Miceli on “Grammatical deficits in aphasia”, by Vallar on