Neuropsychology, as a branch of psychology and neurology, is a science studying the relationship between the human brain and behaviors. The main objective of neuropsychology is to understand specific psychological processes and behaviors of human being from the perspective of the structure and function of the brain. It is scientific in its approach and shares an information processing view of the mind with cognitive psychology and cognitive science.

“The brain controls all of our thoughts, feelings and behaviors”. This notion was not generally agreed in the history of when neuropsychology began to emerge. The origin of the development in neuropsychology can be traced back to around 3500 B.C. in ancient Egypt, when Imhotep, one of the first physicians recorded in history, began to study functions of the brain scientifically. Nevertheless, by that time, the brain was still looked upon as a useless organ and was generally discarded during burial processes and autopsies. People at that time tended to explain human body function from a religious point of view and attribute any abnormalities to bad spirits and the gods. The brain has not always been looked upon as the center for the functioning body as we know it to be now; rather, it has taken hundreds of years for the hundreds of great minds committed to their scientific investigation for the discovery of our brain’s functions and its relations to our behaviors.

Neuropsychology can be seen as an experimental and clinical field of psychology that aims to study, assess, understand and treat behaviors directly related to brain functioning. The major difference between experimental and clinical neuropsychology is that the prior involves studying healthy humans with experimental psychology approach to understand human brain functions in a laboratory setting, whereas the latter applies neuropsychological knowledge to the assessment, management and rehabilitation of people with brain disorders in clinical settings or as an expert witness in medico-legal proceedings. Some experimental neuropsychologists would also conduct animal studies. By integrating with a psychological point of view to the treatment for brain disordered patients, a clinical neuropsychologist can understand how the brain disorder may affect and be affected by psychological factors, and thereby determine whether a person is demonstrating difficulties attributed to the brain pathology or simply a psychological reaction or both. Another sub-division of neuropsychology is termed as cognitive neuropsychology, which is an approach composing the elements of both experimental and clinical neuropsychology. Cognitive neuropsychology studies the behaviors of people who have sustained brain injury or neurological disorders to understand human brain functions, with the basic principle that a specific part of the brain is in some way involved in certain cognitive function if that cognitive function becomes impaired after that specific brain region get injured.  

“The brain controls all of our thoughts, feelings and behaviors”. This notion was not generally agreed in the history of when neuropsychology began to emerge. The origin of the development in neuropsychology can be traced back to around 3500 B.C. in ancient Egypt, when Imhotep, one of the first physicians recorded in history, began to study functions of the brain scientifically. Nevertheless, by that time, the brain was still looked upon as a useless organ and was generally discarded during burial processes and autopsies. People at that time tended to explain human body function from a religious point of view and attribute any abnormalities to bad spirits and the gods. The brain has not always been looked upon as the center for the functioning body as we know it to be now; rather, it has taken hundreds of years for the hundreds of great minds committed to their scientific investigation for the discovery of our brain’s functions and its relations to our behaviors.