Six Landmark Case Reports Essential for Neuropsychiatric Literacy

What is it about?

Six landmark cases in the history of neuropsychiatry are presented in this article. The authors relate the story of each case and highlight the importance of each in the context of what was known in the scientific world at the time of publication. The paper utilizes primary sources and emphasizes aspect of each case that are not typically examined. Phineas Gage, usually cited as the first case of frontal lobe damage leading to personality change, actually enjoyed some degree of vocational recovery after the tamping iron injury to his brain. The case of Louis Victor Leborgne ("Tan”) helped to demonstrate the brain-basis of language but also might have shown that psychiatric symptoms can accompany a loss of expressive language. Auguste Deter actually had early onset Alzheimer Disease but it presented with psychosis as well as the cognitive disturbances we associate with that disease. Solomon Shereshevsky ("S"), demonstrated the cognitive costs of having an extraordinary memory. The "JP" case demonstrates that lifelong failure of adaptation may result from early damage to the frontal regions of the brain. And Henry Gustav Molaison ("HM") not only taught us that the hippocampus was important for recall, but that it was specifically not involved in memory for actions such as riding a bicycle. Case reports have been crucial to the progress of our understanding of the brain but are often undervalued in the modern neuropsychiatric literature.

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