Neuropsychology
Prof. Dr. Bruno Kopp
Clinical neuropsychology deals with changes in brain performance caused by brain diseases. These changes can affect, for example, attention, memory, language, thinking, goal-oriented control of one's own actions, psychomotor skills, visual perception, emotional experience or, more generally, personality in the sense of permanent (usually undesirable) changes in behavior.
Neuropsychological examinations (often also called test psychological examinations or testing) include a comprehensive examination of changes in cognitive performance and emotional experience and their effects on behavior. As a rule, they include taking a medical and external history, careful observation of behaviour and, in particular, the recording of cognitive performance using standardized test procedures. Various areas of performance are systematically examined. Examples of this include
- Disorders of visual perception (including visual field defects, agnosia (object recognition))
- Neglect (hemiplegia)
- Spatial-cognitive disorders
- Attention disorders
- Memory disorders
- Executive disorders of action control
- Language and calculation disorders
- Psychomotor disorders
- Disorders of insight into the illness
- Disorders of disease processing
- Emotional disorders (e.g. depression)
- Motivational disorders (e.g. apathy)
- Behavioral disorders (e.g. impulse control disorders)
Examinations of such brain functions are offered to inpatients admitted to the Neurological Department on request by the attending physicians.
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Bruno Kopp
E-mail: kopp.bruno@mh-hannover.de