behavioral neurology behavioral neurology behavioral neurology is a subspecialty of neurology that studies the impact of neurological damage and disease upon behavior, memory, and cognition, and the treatment thereof. two fields associated with behavioral neurology are neuropsychiatry and neuropsychology. in the united states, 'behavioral neurology & neuropsychiatry' has been recognized as a single subspecialty by the united council for neurologic subspecialties (ucns) since 2004. neuropsychology topics brain regions clinical neuropsychology cognitive neuropsychology cognitive neuroscience dementia human brain neuroanatomy neurophysiology neuropsychological assessment neuropsychological rehabilitation traumatic brain injury brain functions arousal attention consciousness decision making executive functions natural language learning memory motor coordination perception planning problem solving thought people alan baddeley arthur l. benton david bohm antonio damasio phineas gage norman geschwind elkhonon goldberg patricia goldman-rakic donald o. hebb kenneth heilman eric kandel edith kaplan muriel lezak benjamin libet rodolfo llinás alexander luria brenda milner karl h. pribram pasko rakic oliver sacks mark rosenzweig roger w. sperry hans-lukas teuber henry molaison ("h.m.", patient) k.c. (patient) tests benton visual retention test continuous performance task halstead-reitan neuropsychological battery hayling and brixton tests lexical decision task luria-nebraska neuropsychological battery mini–mental state examination rey–osterrieth complex figure stroop test wechsler adult intelligence scale wechsler memory scale wisconsin card sorting task psychology portal philosophy portal medicine portal syndromes and diseases commonly studied by behavioral neurology include: agraphia agnosias agraphesthesia alexia (acquired dyslexia) amnesias anosognosia aphasias apraxias aprosodias attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder autism dementia dyslexia epilepsy hemispatial neglect psychosis stroke traumatic brain injury history while descriptions of behavioral syndromes go back to the ancient greeks and egyptians, it was during the 19th century that behavioral neurology began to arise, first with the primitive localization theories of franz gall, followed in the mid 19th century by the first localizations in aphasias by paul broca and then carl wernicke. localizationist neurology and clinical descriptions reached a peak in the late 19th and early 20th century, with work extending into the clinical descriptions of dementias by alois alzheimer and arnold pick. the work of karl lashley in rats for a time in the early to mid 20th century put a damper on localization theory and lesion models of behavioral function. in the united states, the work of norman geschwind led to a renaissance of behavioral neurology. he is famous for his work on disconnection syndromes, aphasia, and behavioral syndromes of limbic epilepsy, also called geschwind syndrome. having trained generations of behavioral neurologists (e.g., antonio damasio), geschwind is considered the father of behavioral neurology. the advent of in vivo neuroimaging starting in the 1980s led to a further strengthening of interest in the cognitive neurosciences and provided a tool that allowed for lesion, structural, and functional correlations with behavioral dysfunction in living people.