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neuropsychology, the assumptions in
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Neuropsychology essays. WHAT ARE THE UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS IN NEUROPSYCHOLOGY? Cognitive Neuropsychology (CN) studies and uses the relationship between normal and abnormal cognitive functioning to attain the following goals. 1. Using models of normal functioning to understanding impaired functioning. 2. Using knowledge of impaired and preserved cognitive abilities of brain-damaged patients to improve models of normal functioning. In order to address the underlying assumptions in CN there is a need to explain why the assumptions are necessary. Despite many years of research in both clinical and cognitive neuropsychology there is no definitive unambiguous model of actual (normal) cognitive processes. Assumptions are therefore required to isolate functions, record and measure them and then to assess the impacts of impairment to those processes. The assumptions are therefore an aid to the process of applying normal and impaired systems to refine the normal models. There are several key assumptions, which underpin the study of CN. These include modularity, isomorphism, universality, subtractivity, and transparency. The relevance and implications of these assumptions remains an important topic of debate. This essay discusses these assumptions, and their implications for the interpretation of neuropsychological data, counter-arguments against their validity and concludes with how these issues help further the understanding of CN as a science and enrichment of the general debates of brain function. All sciences are based upon inferences and develop over time so the assumptions and implications arising from the CN field are shown to be an important contributor to this body of work. The first and possibly the most important assumption in cognitive neuropsychology is that there is a functional organisation of the brain i.e. neuroanatomy affects cognitive process. This is developed by the theory of neurological specificity (isomorphism) which states that different mental functions occupy different brain regions. This is concurs with clinical psychology, which espouses theories on the specific cognitive processes and the areas of the brain responsible for them. Evidence confirming this has been compiled through a number of studies, in particular the abnormalities in brain regions of murderers, whereby specific regions were found through imaging to differ when compared to a set of control (Raine et al, 1997). Developing on this the assumption of modularity in CN states that effects of lesions or damage are localised in the brain leaving other parts of the brain undamaged. Evidence for this is found in neurophysiology where responses are selective and specific. Modularity also assumes that each module processes only one particular type of input.
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