A sub-discipline in physiological psychology that studies brain-behavior relationships in humans, particularly those relating to cognitive functions, by means of specially-devised tests and the use of experimental procedures. Studies of patients with verifiable brain lesions has become a hallmark of research in neuropsychology, following the operation carried out by the neurosurgeon William B. Scoville (1906-1984) in 1953 on the epileptic patient H.M. The bilateral removal of the hippocampus and associated structures resulted in H.M. being unable to store or retrieve new memories. As a consequence, research shifted from attempts to localise memory to studying how memories are stored or retrieved. The term ‘neuropsychology’ appears to have been used first by the physician William Osler (1849-1919) in 1913 during a talk he gave to mark the opening of the Phipps Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Through the work of Karl S. Lashley (1890-1958) and the publication of Donald O. Hebb‘s (1904-1985) influential book The organization of behavior (1949), the term became more widely used.
See Clinical neuropsychology, Cognitive neuroscience, Cognitive psychology, Double dissociation, Forensic psychologist, Hippocampus, Memory, Neurology, Neurophysiology, Neuroscience