Publication details
Editorial: Neuropsychology Through the MRI Looking Glass
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Type | Article in Periodical (without peer review) |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Since its inception as a science, psychology has been explicitly preoccupied with the mind-body relationship, specifically with the role that the nervous system plays in shaping how we perceive the world around us and how we react in our interaction with it. The evidence in this regard are the second and third chapters of William James's 1890 “The Principle of Psychology” (Volume 1), which explain the functions of the brain and the general conditions underlying its activity, as well as the entire work of Wilhelm Wundt's 1904 “Principles of Physiological Psychology”, which explicitly linked the evolution of various mental functions to the organization and physiology of the nervous system. Yet, it was not until 1980s when the neuropsychology has established itself as a branch of psychology in its own right, aiming to explain how the brain and the other parts of the nervous system influence one's cognition, emotions and behaviors using a variety of methods from observation and questionnaires to computerized tasks gathering reaction time and electrophysiology. The knowledge thus obtained in healthy individuals was then employed by neuropsychologists in assessing the impact of various diseases on brain structure and function. The next decade, the 1990s, ushered in the neuroscience era, with the development of various techniques of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), of which the functional MRI (fMRI) proved to be a key tool in uncovering, in vivo, the neurophysiological substrate of specific brain functions. Neuropsychologists quickly incorporated these new techniques in their research methods arsenal and nowadays they are part of the regular curricula in most neuropsychology training programs. In the current Research Topic we sought to gather a group of articles that will showcase the use of various MRI techniques in neuropsychology in both healthy individuals and those affected by different diseases, thus highlighting the specific benefits that MRI can bring in this field. |