important neuropsychologist who helped to shape his profession’s focus and development.

Among his contributions was his proposal that behavioral disturbances are based on the
destruction of specific brain pathways that he called disconnections. He presented his idea in
his now classic article “Disconnexion Syndromes in Animals and Man” (1965), which was
largely responsible for reemphasizing the important role of neuroanatomy in neuropsychology.

Non-Western attitudes

Although Western ideologies predominantly shaped the behavioral sciences, non-Western

cultures also developed theories to explain behavior. In India, one of the earliest and most
important medical documents, the Atharva-Veda (700 B.C.), proposed that the soul is
nonmaterial and immortal. The ahamkara represents an aspect of the mind, which personalises
every experience and ascribes everything to oneself, thus, constituting cognitions and feelings
of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ (Jakubczak, 2013). Four sub-concepts of ahamkara based on Indian
tradition have been described: individuality (sense of uniqueness), agency (sense of doer-ship),
identification (relationship with worldly objects, involving associations and companionship,
attractions and attachment, and ownership), and separation (feeling of being different from
others).

Common to eastern Mediterranean and African culture was the belief that a god or gods sent
diseases. Egyptians viewed life as a balance between internal and external forces. They
conceptualized the brain as different from the mind. Arab countries demonstrated a humanist
attitude toward the mentally ill, partly because of the Muslim belief that God loves the insane
person. The treatment of mental patients was humanist and emphasized diets, baths, and even
musical concerts especially designed to soothe the patient. Chinese medical practitioners
endorsed a mechanistic view of mental processes.

BRAIN-BEHAVIOR RELATIONSHIP

The central topic in neuropsychology is how brain and behavior are related. In two closely
related aspects, the link between biology (brain) and psychology (behavior) is a ‘two-way
street’.
 Fig 3: Links between levels of (a) the phenomena of behavior and brain and (b) the
disciplines studying them

The brain controls behavior. In turn, behavior (e.g., social contact) influences events within the
brain. Also, there is the relationship between biologists of the brain (e.g., neuroscientists) and
psychologists. Psychologists need to look at the biological level to seek brain mechanisms that
explain mind and behaviour. However, researchers concerned with the brain can get insight
into its working by looking to psychology. Knowing what the brain is doing at a psychological
level can give vital insight into how it does it and the kind of brain structures involved. Thus,
there is a regular exchange of information between biology and psychology.

Two doctrines have emerged which shaped the field of neuropsychology. The first doctrine,
vitalism, suggests that many behaviors, such as thinking, are only partially controlled by
mechanical or logical forces- they are also partially self-determined and are separate from
chemical and physical determinants. Extreme proponents of vitalism argue that spirits or
psychic phenomena account for much observable behavior. The second doctrine, materialism,
suggests that logical forces determine brain-behavior function. Materialism favours a
mechanistic view of the brain. The idea is that rational behavior can be fully explained by the
workings of the nervous system. No need to refer to a nonmaterial mind.

Biological explanations of behavior fall into four categories: physiological, ontogenetic,

evolutionary, and functional (Tinbergen, 1951). A physiological explanation relates a
behavior to the activity of the brain and other organs. It deals with the machinery of the body-
for example, the chemical reactions that enable hormones to influence brain activity and the
routes by which brain activity controls muscle contractions. An ontogenetic explanation
describes how a structure or behavior develops, including the influences of genes, nutrition,
experiences, and their interactions. For example, the ability to inhibit impulses develops
gradually from infancy through the teenage years, reflecting gradual maturation of the frontal
parts of the brain. An evolutionary explanation reconstructs the evolutionary history of a
structure or behavior. An evolutionary explanation of human goose bumps is that the behavior
evolved in our remote ancestors and we inherited the mechanism. A functional explanation
describes why a structure or behavior evolved as it did. For example, many species have an
appearance that matches their background. A functional explanation is that camouflaged
appearance makes the animal inconspicuous to predators.

Talking about brain-behavior relationship, mentalism and dualism were the two classic
theories which debated upon the brain-behavior relationship. The Greek philosopher Aristotle
(384-322 BC) was the first person to develop a formal theory of behavior. He proposed that a
nonmaterial psyche is responsible for human thoughts, perceptions, and emotions and for such
processes as imagination, opinion, desire, pleasure, pain, memory and reason. The psyche is
independent of the body but in Aristotle’s view, works through the heart to produce action. The
philosophical position that a person’s mind is responsible for behavior is called mentalism,
meaning “of the mind”. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) proposed that the body is like the
machines. It is material and thus clearly has spatial extent, and it responds mechanically and
reflexively to events that impinge on it. Described as nonmaterial and without spatial extent,
the mind, as Descartes saw it, was different from the body. The body operated on principles
similar to those of a machine, but the mind decided what movements the machine should make.
He located the site of action of the mind in the pineal body. His choice was based on the logic
that the pineal body is the only structure in the nervous system not composed of two bilaterally
symmetrical halves and moreover that it is located close to the ventricles. Descartes’s position
that mind and body are separate but can interact is called dualism, to indicate that behavior is
caused by two things.

Different theories were proposed to describe brain-behavior relationship such as localization,

lateralization, and equipotentiality. Around 1800, Franz Gall (1757-1828) proposed that the
human mind was organized in different innate faculties, which were localized in different
organs or centers of the brain, making the cerebral localization of mental functions a central
issue in the relationships between brain and mind (Lesky, 1970). He developed his hypothesis,
called localization of function, that a different, specific brain area controls each kind of
behavior. Paul Broca discovered the location of motor speech (localization of language) in the
posterior, inferior region of the left frontal lobe which came to be known as Broca’s area and
the syndrome that results from its damage is called Broca’s aphasia. Carl Wernicke
discovered the location of understanding of speech in the superior, posterior region of temporal
lobe, called Wernicke’s area and its damage resulted in Wernicke’s aphasia. Pierre
Flourens proposed that the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and brainstem functioned globally as
a whole, equipotential and in conjunction with every other part.

According to lateralization, the two halves of the human brain are not exactly alike. Each
hemisphere has functional specializations. The left and right sides of the brain are specialised
to attend to different information, to process sensory inputs in different ways and to control
different types of motor behavior. This is referred to as hemispheric specialization or brain
lateralization. Marc Dax (1771-1837) discovered through clinical practice that the left
hemisphere is responsible for language and hence it is dominant. In the 1950s, Roger Sperry &
Ronald Myers did a spilt-brain experiment on cats by damaging the corpus callosum and found
that if the corpus is damaged, the two hemispheres act differently and that the function of the
corpus is to transfer learned information from one hemisphere to the other. According to the
current perspective, a lot of factors determine how much the two hemispheres communicate.

UNDERSTANDING NERVOUS SYSTEM

Cells are the building blocks of all living organisms. Moving up the evolutionary ladder,
increased complexity of behavior corresponds with a more specialized nervous system, which
is essential for speeded communication. The nervous system is an organized group of cells,
called neurons, specialized for the conduction of electrochemical stimuli from sensory
receptors through a network to the site at which a response occurs. It is the network of nerve
cells and fibres which transmits nerve impulses between parts of the body.

Structure of the nervous system: Traditionally, the vertebrate nervous system is divided into
two major parts: the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS).
The central nervous system is located within the skull and spine and consists of the brain and
spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system is located outside the skull and spine and consists
of the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord.