Can Neuropsychological Testing Produce Unequivocal Evidence of Brain Damage? I. Testing for Specific Deficits

Neuropsychological tests that produce continuous distributions routinely show some degree of overlap between groups with and without brain damage, and there is an inevitable degree of uncertainty in group differentiation when using statistical inferential methods. Recognizing these circumstances, Pliskin, Ramati, and Sweeney (2007 Pliskin , N. H. , Ramati , A. , & Sweeney , J. ( 2007 ). A case of electrical injury: Neuropsychological and functional imaging considerations . Division of Clinical Neuropsychology Newsletter , 40 ( 25 ), 3 – 4 and 11–13 . [Google Scholar]) recently stated that neuropsychological testing alone does not address the underlying basis (or brain damage) for cognitive changes that may be inferred from test results. The present study proposed that brain-based specific deficits, evaluated on a “present” or “absent” basis, might prove to be a valuable resource in supplementing interpretation of tests based on continuous distributions by providing, in many instances, unequivocal evidence of brain damage. Comparisons of controls with a group of brain-damaged persons, as reported in this study, strongly supported this proposal.