Patient Case Studies in Understanding Cognitive Processes - Coursework Example

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF PATIENT CASE STUDIES IN UNDERSTANDING COGNITIVE PROCESSES By Institution City, State Date: Cognitive neuropsychology came in to existence during the second half of the nineteenth century. This is the time when neurologists began the study of brains that were damaged with a view of diagnosing the problem areas. During this time, neurologists began to form inferences with regard to the parts of the brain that contributed to a certain cognitive ability that individuals had. They did this with an assumption that the damaged cognitive abilities in the brain of the affected person could be compared with the cognitive abilities of another person whose brain had not been damaged. From this time onwards, professionals developed more accurate techniques that would help make comparisons on a more accurate basis. In the improvements, they included a universal framework that could be used all over the world and one that was aided by research paradigms that supported cognitive neuropsychology. This is the time when the use of patient case studies started being used to understand cognitive processes. The use of patient case studies to understand cognitive processes has certain strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of using patient case studies to understand cognitive processes are several. First, it has helped neuropsychologists understand cognitive processes more accurately and increase their understanding of cognitive processes. Despite the fact that the use of patient case studies is not a 100 percent way of accurately understanding cognitive processes, it has helped neuropsychologists increase their accuracy by providing ways to infer with regard to the part of the brain that is responsible for a certain cognitive ability. This knowledge has helped neuropsychologists and other specialists be able to understand how to deal with problems associated with brain functioning. This means it has become rather easy to gain insights with respect to the way the brain works by looking at where the brain is not working. Brain injury, invasive surgery and unusual neural connections cause certain malfunctioning and abnormalities. Patient case studies offers insights to the way the brain does its functions and helps to understand the conscious experience (Braisby, 2005, p. 60). Cognitive processes refer to the mental processes that are involved in the acquisition, storing and using knowledge. This means that the major aspect of cognition involves attention, memory, perception learning and language. Therefore, understanding how the damaged brain works and the manner in which the damaged parts of the brain affects the normal functioning of cognitive processes is vital in helping researchers understand the functioning of the normal brain. For instance, studying the damaged parts of the brains of people who experience language difficulties and attention difficulties among others can help researchers, neuropsychologists, other brain specialists and the public understand the parts of the brains that are responsible for these processes in people whose brains are functioning normally (Caramazza, & Coltheart, 2006, p 4). In respect to understanding cognitive processes and the functioning of the brain, it is imperative to understand that it is not compulsory that the brain be damaged in order to exhibit certain abnormal or unusual anomalies. Sometimes, the brain can behave in unexpected ways, such as synesthesia. Patient case studies are vital in understanding these anomalies or phenomena because they involve the comparison of patients whose brain are functioning normally and the patients whose brains are not functioning normally; thereby, helping researchers find the problematic areas. Aphasia studies have been explored because of the strengths of patient case studies. The ability to communicate with language has been established to be a remarkably complex cognitive function. Patient case studies, for instance, the case studies of people affected by aphasia show that language could be compromised in different ways depending on the area of the brain that has been affected or damaged and the severity of the damage to the brain. Case studies involving aphasia have revealed that the left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for language and speech functions. The case studies have also revealed that recovery from damage (aphasia) caused by surgery or brain trauma highlights insights with respect to the manner in which the brain compensates for the damage(Caramazza, & Coltheart, 2006, p 5). The parts that are near the section of the brain, which is damaged, in the case of language functions, take over those functions to replace the damaged area. This shows a very important aspect with respect to the strengths of patient case studies. This shows that patient case studies are essential in helping neuropsychologists understand cognitive processes by understanding how damages to the brain affect cognitive processes and how the brain compensates for these damages and the functions done by the damaged parts. Without case studies, it would be difficult to tell the functions of brain parts and the differences that occur when the brain is damaged from when it is normal. In addition, it would be difficult to tell how the brain and which parts compensate for the damaged parts (Braisby, 2005, p. 67). Certain injuries to the brain or brain tumors require quick and early intervention to save the life of the person affected. These injuries require immediate attention because delay can result to permanent brain damage or the loss of life. Sometimes, brain specialists have to carry out tests and check-ups to be able to carry out further surgery or treatment to the patient. However, when immediate intervention is required such tests and check-ups become less efficient. This is when patient case studies come in. The use of patient case studies can help brain specialists know what interventions to carry out when immediate attention is required for people who have damaged brains. Brain specialists can look at patient case studies that resemble the problem that the individual exhibits and be able to understand the step or intervention to use in order to help the individual function well cognitively and avoid the loss of life. This is one of the valuable strengths of patient case studies in that they can be used when other methods seem not appropriate in terms of necessity. Another issue is that in certain cases, brain specialists may need to refer to patient case studies and infer the damage to the brain or cases where the brain is not functioning normally yet there is no damage to the brain. Therefore, patient case studies can be used in times of need for quick response or when specialists cannot tell the exact damage that has occurred to the brain (Caramazza, & Coltheart, 2006, p 7). Patient case studies have the strength of revealing damage parts to the brain that are helpful for brain specialists to develop appropriate ways of responding to the damages. The brain is damaged in different ways and these damages affect dissimilar zones of the brain and in different ways. This means that the damages to the brain call for different approaches when applying interventions so that the cognitive processes of a patient can function in the best way possible if not normally. For instance, patients who suffer damages to the lexical sematic from strike and patients who suffer with semantic dementia all make semantic errors with respect to comprehension and naming functions. However, these patients show differences when it comes to issues of stimuli and tests. For instance, patients with semantic dementia show familiarity and consistency across tests while those with post-stroke aphasia lack consistency in tests. Therefore, when forming interventions to address these patients, brain specialists must use different strategies despite the fact that these patients make semantic errors in comprehension and naming. Patient case studies can help brain specialists understand the best ways to respond to these patients in order to solve their problems by studying the damages and the best intervention strategies for the patients (Braisby, 2005, p. 75). The use of the patient case studies has certain weaknesses in trying to understand cognitive processes. The use of patient case studies in cognitive neuropsychology has raised sharp questions with regard to the difference in the methodologies used. First, the classic use of group experimentation has proved that it is not appropriate in studying single patient symptoms. This raises the question of how representative of the population is the single person whose brain has been damaged. This clearly shows that a single patient whose brain has been damaged does not offer much if the focus is given to the group. This shows that the results from the case studies cannot be generalized to the wider population especially judging from the fact that brain injuries are different similarly to their effects. A case study deals with only one group/ person and cannot be certainly used to represent another group/ person (Caramazza, & Coltheart, 2006, p 9). There is also an aspect of researcher bias. This is when researchers own subjective feeling influence the case study. Most patient case studies are based on qualitative data analysis, which means that the case studies depend on the interpretation of the psychologist or researcher. This means that there is a high chance of observer bias that could interfere with the analysis of the sense of the data and lead to erroneous interpretation. A researcher can manipulate the case study to support or prove their theory. This will obviously lead to misinterpretation of the cognitive processes (Caramazza, & Coltheart, 2006, p 10). The use of patient case studies has also indicated considerable disagreements between neuropsychological studies. For instance, the reviews conducted on the evidence on executive function in ASD found mixed results. On the other hand, findings on domains of executive function, for instance, inhibition of pre-potent response have indicated a form of consistency. However, components such as mental flexibility have been found to be inconsistent. Recent analyses have indicated that neurological etiologies of ASD are complex similarly to other patient case studies and that they cannot be sufficiently used to explain all cases. Another weakness in using patient case studies to understand cognitive processes is that neuropsychologists infer that the damaged brain of the person under study was normal. This issue has its own controversies because it is difficult to exactly tell why neuropsychologists automatically assume that the damaged person’s brain was normal. This is because it has been shown that it is not compulsory that a person’s brain should be damaged for the brain not to function normally. The brain can fail to function normally even when it is not damaged. Therefore, despite the fact that inferring that the damaged person was functioning normally could help neuropsychologists understand the cognitive processes and be able to respond appropriately, it could be misleading. The problem that an individual experiences could have been present even before his or her brain was damaged. Therefore, trying to solve his or her problem from the perspective of originally-normal could be misleading for the neuropsychologists and lead to further problems or the failure to adequately address the patient’s problem (Braisby, 2005, p. 78). The classic methodology used for experimentation in cognitive psychology typically test groups of the individuals in order to generalize across populations. However, the weakness that comes in is that when a single patient with brain damage is presented, it becomes impossible to wait until another patient can come with exactly the same type of injury or brain defect. This is because, adding to the fact that the patient could require immediate intervention, he or she has the right to be treated immediately. Moreover, certain cases are exceptionally rare, such as Capgras Syndrome, a brain damage that makes the patient think that his family has been replaced by imposters. It is also difficult to get the desired uniformity among patients because damaged brain is irregular among patients meaning that it is not easy to find a lesion exactly in the same area where another patient has it. This renders patient case studies somewhat ineffective (Caramazza, & Coltheart, 2006, p 12). In conclusion, cognitive psychology has made use of patient case studies to understand cognitive processes. However, patient case studies heavily rely on generalizations that are a difficult issue to achieve on an exact basis when studying the brain. Using patient case studies to understand cognitive processes has both strengths and weaknesses as discussed above. While patient case studies offer a good way to understand cognitive processes in human beings as a group, it is difficult to generalize all cases and apply them to different groups because brain damage and injuries happen differently and affect differently. In addition, not all malfunction issues occur from brain damages or injuries. References Braisby, N., 2005. Cognitive Psychology: A Methods Companion. 1 edition ed. London: OUP Oxford. Caramazza, A. & Coltheart, M. (2006) Cognitive Neuropsychology twenty years on. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 23, 3-12. Read More