Despite dramatic advances in our understanding of the brain and brain disorders, we still have much uncharted territory to explore in neuropsychiatry and behavioral neurology, two rapidly growing disciplines devoted to understanding the behavioral consequences of brain dysfunction and using this information to improve patient care.
The second edition of this popular pocket guide (part of American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.'s Concise Guides series; it literally fits into the pocket of a lab coat or jacket) is updated throughout, featuring new medications and new diagnostic procedures and criteria. Like the first edition, it presents brief synopses of the major neuropsychiatric and neurobehavioral syndromes, discusses their clinical assessment, and provides guidelines for management, plus a glossary, index, and bibliographies that refer to more extensive reading.
The authors summarize diagnostic and treatment information in easy-to-read tables, including clinical features, underlying pathophysiology, and treatment options for the major neuropsychiatric disorders.
Beginning with several chapters on neuropsychiatric assessment methods, basic neuroanatomic and neurochemical principles, neuropsychiatric symptoms (including unexplained neurological symptoms, such as generalized anxiety, panic, and conversion and dissociative disorders) and syndromes (e.g., frontal lobe, aphasia), and the differential diagnosis of major neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g., depression, mania, psychosis, anxiety), the authors organize subsequent chapters by disease: Visual/visuospatial impairment, which is critical to human survival and most severe with right-brain dysfunction and injury, where it causes a variety of neuropsychiatric symptoms; Disorders of memory (etiology, anatomy, and tests for disorders such as amnesia), epilepsy (especially temporal lobe epilepsy), dementia and delirium (emphasizing the clinical criteria identifying the different dementias), and movement disorders (including Parkinson's disease and hyperkinetic movement disorders and tremors); Stroke (cerebrovascular disease is one of the most common causes of acquired behavior change in adults) and brain tumors (with associated neuropsychiatric morbidity); White matter diseases (e.g., multiple sclerosis), with acquired or hereditary leukoencephalopathies, which can be further classified pathologically or according to the underlying metabolic abnormality; and head injury (e.g., intracranial hematoma, infection, epilepsy) and its sequelae (e.g., personality and cognitive changes, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder)
The final chapter covers the latest treatments, such as neuropsychopharmacology (e.g., antidepressants, antipsychotics, sedative hypnotics, mood-stabilizers, anticonvulsants), electroconvulsive therapy, vagus nerve stimulation, and neurosurgical procedures (i.e., destruction of large tracts of white matter to and from the frontal lobes).
An immediately useful clinical companion for psychiatrists and geriatric psychiatrists, neurologists, and neuropsychologists both within the U.S. and abroad, this volume is also exceptionally practical for students and residents because of its broad scope and easily accessible information.
Jeffrey L. Cummings, M.D., is Augustus S. Rose Professor of Neurology and Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Science at the UCLA School of Medicine in Los Angeles, California.
Michael R. Trimble, M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.C.Psych., is Raymond Way Professor in Behavioral Neurology at the Institute of Neurology in Queen Square in London, England.
