Traditionally, research findings in cognitive neuropsychology have been used as theoretical bench marks for research in other areas of psychology attempting to explain brain-behavior relationships. Several branch disciplines in the behavioral sciences have used knowledge gained through studies in cognitive neuropsychology not only to help support theories developed in their respective areas, but also to advance more in-depth frameworks to better understand human behavior. However, within recent years there has tended to be greater emphasis placed on understanding what areas of the brain are involved in general cognitive functions, and researchers have tended to forget the intricacies of cognition. The explosion in the use of fMRI and other functional imaging techniques has helped to deemphasize the importance of understanding how cognitive processes can fractionate along important theoretical lines. As a result, we are often confronted with research that is devoid of theory and does little to advance our understanding of how the brain and mind work. In her edited book, The Handbook of Cognitive Neuropsychology: What Deficits Reveal About the Human Mind, Brenda Rapp has admirably assembled a collection of chapters that reminds us of the importance of how neurological patients can inform us about the mind, and, in my opinion, how such findings can and should be used to provide a theoretical road map to understanding brain-behavior relationships.

In the preface, Rapp describes the scope of the book emphasizing that the chapters are not in depth reviews of the cognitive domains described, but rather are meant to discuss the central issues relevant to each domain and how studies of patients' deficits has helped to inform us about these specific processes. Each of the chapters meets these expectations, often going beyond reviewing relevant cognitive neuropsychological studies, but also discussing how research in cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, computational science, and clinical neuropsychology has helped to inform theories in cognitive neuropsychology. The book may be directed at a variety of audiences, but most likely will serve as an excellent text book for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate courses in cognitive psychology. However, this book will also be invaluable to advanced graduate students and researchers in cognitive neuropsychology who need a quick reference to current research in their fields. I would also strongly recommend this book for individuals conducting functional neuroimaging research who are interested in understanding the state of our knowledge on cognition, and who wish to apply this knowledge within the framework of functional studies.

The book is divided up into nine general sections entitled “Foundations”; “Objects and Space”; “Attention and Consciousness”; “Words”; “Sentences”; “Memory”; “Music, Numbers, and Time”; “Actions and Plans”; and “Future Directions.” These sections cover the most relevant areas of cognitive neuropsychology, with only a few omissions (see below). The chapters are well-integrated and overlap is kept to a minimum. There is somewhat of an over-representation of language functions in the book (i.e., 1/3 of the chapters are subsumed under the sections “Words” and “Sentences”), but this is likely due to Rapp's primary research interests as well as the fact that language functions have received considerable attention in the cognitive neuropsychology literature. Nevertheless, these chapters on language functions provide an excellent review of various methodological and theoretical approaches that not only have been applied to language processes, but can also be generalized to other areas of cognitive neuropsychology.

In the first section, “Foundations,” the chapters by Coltheart and Selnes provide a brief introduction to the field of cognitive neuropsychology. Coltheart's chapter focuses primarily on the field of cognitive neuropsychology, defining it, reviewing important issues such as modularity, and detailing its methods. This chapter will serve as an excellent, albeit brief, review that provides a rationale for the field and an appropriate backdrop for the other chapters. Selnes' chapter offers a good historical overview focusing on the origins of cognitive neuropsychology, primarily emphasizing the evolution of research on language functions.

The second section, Objects and Space, contains three chapters by Riddoch and Humphreys, De Haan, and McCloskey. Riddoch and Humphreys give an excellent overview of the research on object recognition, including general reviews of the various early and higher-level object recognition deficits following brain damage. In providing an excellent argument for the notion that the cognitive processing of faces is distinct from the processing of other visual objects, De Haan surveys multiple sources of support for this argument in addition to patient work, including single cell recordings, developmental studies, and neuroimaging research. The chapter on spatial representation by McCloskey veers somewhat from the stated objective of the book (to provide a general overview of the state of research in the specific area of research) and instead gives a more theoretical account as to how spatial representations can be conceptualized. This chapter does not go into great detail about what one would normally discuss on this topic in a handbook (e.g., more detail on neglect), but I rather liked his approach and felt that the areas relevant to this topic that were not covered in this chapter were covered very well in other chapters.

The section entitled “Attention and Consciousness” contained two chapters, one by Umiltá and the other by Farah. Umiltá provides a top notch review of attentional functioning, primarily reviewing studies addressing how attention can be distributed within different frames of reference (e.g., space vs. objects), the movement of attention, and the mechanisms of attention (e.g., facilitation or inhibition). Farah's excellent chapter on consciousness uses a framework in offering evidence distinguishing between three accounts of how the brain might undertake this cognitive process. This framework is then used when reviewing the relevant research, most of which focuses on unconscious perception of various visual information (e.g., objects, faces, words, etc.), but does not go into much detail about other aspects of consciousness. Nevertheless, this is an excellent treatment of the topic.

The next two sections, “Words” and “Sentences,” provide detailed reviews of very specific aspects of language processes. Hillis reviews how the lexical system is organized giving evidence for and against the notion of multiple lexical systems. In their chapter, Allen and Badecker report studies examining word morphology and how words can break down following brain damage. Rapp, Folk and Tainturier, discuss the cognitive processes involved in word reading, initially addressing the processes involved in determining letter identification and letter positioning, then going on to describe how the printed word accesses word meaning. Tainturier and Rapp's chapter on spelling is also excellent, particularly in their discussion of how reading and spelling are associated. Nickel's chapter on the cognitive neuropsychology of spoken word production deals with theories of lexical access and Gollan and Kroll's chapter gives an interesting overview of lexical access among bilingual individuals. Two chapters in the section entitled “Sentences” review sentence comprehension and sentence production. Martin's chapter on sentence comprehension was excellent, and I particularly enjoyed the discussion of the role of working memory in sentence comprehension. Berndt's chapter on sentence production was also informative and comprehensive.

The next section, “Memory,” contains three chapters on the structure of memory, semantic memory, and memory distortion. Parkin's chapter on the structure and mechanisms of memory provided a good historical overview of topics in this area, but was somewhat disappointing in the sense that more current theories of memory processing were not discussed. Shelton and Caramazza's chapter on semantic memory is a very good theoretical discussion on the fractionation of semantic categories following brain damage. In their chapter, Dodson and Schacter relay the nature of memory distortions and how these types of errors in memory come about.

In the next section, “Music, Numbers, and Time,” the chapter on time perception by Mangels and Ivry was very intriguing with its good overview on the theories of time perception. Noel's chapter on numerical cognition explores how numbers are stored and processed, making an excellent argument for the notion that certain numerical operations have verbal representations. The chapter on music by Peretz provided a superb overview of the current cognitive theories of music perception, and gave a glimpse of a very interesting topic—the relationship between music and emotion, about which I would have liked to have had more details.

The section on “Actions and Plans” contains two chapters, the first, authored by Buxbaum and Coslett, focuses on the cognitive aspects of action with a very good overview. The information they presented on a possible hand-centered coordinate system for spatial attention was especially intriguing. The second chapter by Humphreys, Ford, and Riddoch on everyday actions was equally excellent.

The final section, “Future Directions,” contains a single chapter by McCloskey in which he champions the field of cognitive neuropsychology pointing out very convincingly how cognitive neuropsychology can help address questions regarding normal human cognition, functional localization, and understanding patient's deficits. He offers good suggestions as to how in the future cognitive neuropsychology can contribute to these three areas.

Overall, this book was excellent. There were a few areas of cognition that I feel could have been included, however, such as chapters on implicit memory, emotion, and social cognition. Nevertheless, Rapp should be commended for bringing together a group of highly scholarly chapters from experts in their respective fields. This book will serve as an excellent textbook for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate courses. Further, this book will serve as a valuable reference for individuals wishing to conduct research on the nature of cognition.