Brain, Vol. 127, No. 2, 239-242, 2004
© 2004 Guarantors of Brain
doi: 10.1093/brain/awh085
The pathology of experience
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The fundamental assumption of cognitive neuroscience is that the way we behave and the way we experience the world is determined by the way our brains work. Pathological cases provide the most stringent tests for this assumption. From our knowledge of the way our brains work it should be possible to predict what kind of behaviour or experience will occur as a result of damage to a specific brain region or system. Lichtheim (1885
) was the first to describe this approach. In his simple model of how the brain processes speech Lichtheim pointed out that there were seven possible ‘interruption points’ in this system. He then specified the different kinds of aphasia that should result from damage at each of these points. A striking and erroneous early example of the approach concerns cerebral achromatopsia. For many years neurologists refused to accept the existence of this disorder on the basis
Visual Hallucinations
False beliefs
Capgras syndrome
Delusions of control
Multiple representations of the body
Out-of-the-body experiences
1 Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK