Introduction

This chapter addresses some key issues that arise when performing brain imaging experiments on patients with neurological insult and psychological impairment. Since the mid-1990s, neuropsychology has been fundamentally augmented by neurophysiological measures of cognitive processing. This has led to a revision of some cognitive models and a shift in emphasis from cognitive science to cognitive neuroscience. In this chapter, we consider how functional neuroimaging of neuropsychological patients can be applied to understand structure-function relationships in the human brain and the mechanisms that underlie recovery of function following brain damage. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first reviews the aims and limitations of neuropsychological studies, with an emphasis on the lesion-deficit model. The second focuses on functional imaging studies of patients and how they can overcome the difficulties that confound the lesion deficit model. The third, under “Issues,” highlights the limitations of functional neuroimaging studies and how these problems can be resolved by reference to the lesion-deficit model. A systematic approach for combining functional imaging and neuropsychological studies is presented that allows one to identify the neuronal structures sustaining functional recovery following brain damage.