Chapter 9 - Imaging and Neuropsychology

Abstract

This chapter presents a discussion on the neuropsychology of focal epilepsy, emphasizing memory and language functions. The chapter elucidates that cognitive architecture has an impact on the patterns of activation observed during functional neuroimaging and on the patterns of correspondence between the structural magnetic resonance (MR) measures and task performance. The chapter illustrates the significance of functional neuroimaging on neurocognitive model building in this field. The work discussed in the chapter suggests that there is an essential complementarity between the functional neuroimaging approaches to cognition in focal epilepsy and the lesion method that has long formed the basis of neuropsychology. Both are capable of fractionating or dissociating the neurocognitive systems. The use of neuroimaging in this way is predicated on two assumptions: (1) tasks with differing cognitive architectures are capable of producing reliably different patterns of activation, and (2) there is an invariant relationship between the various cognitive subcomponents of a task and their neural substrates. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the functional neuroanatomy of declarative memory and the disorders of secondary memory in temporal lobe epilepsy.