I would like to show offer key advice for young researchers of neuropsychology. What is most important is to know Brodmann's areas for a better understanding of neuroanatomy and as a clue to signs and symptoms of neurological disorders. I also believe it is important to learn neuropathology, broaden the field of neuropsychology, and be curious about new areas of neuroscience. To achieve your goal, you should choose a central subject that interests you most.

Drug discovery has been attempted on amyloid β and tau protein that underlie the pathological level of Alzheimer's disease. However, there have not been any drug that has succeeded. Various causes are considered for the reason. One of the biggest problem is the difficulty of pathological diagnosis of neurodegeneration since they are hidden beneath the thick skull. The second is the fact that pathological process of Alzheimer's disease undergoes for a long period of time, nearly 20 years. Based on these facts, the design of the clinical trial and the design of the medicine are improving, and it is getting closer to success step by step.

Cognitive rehabilitation is a service designed to remediate disorders of perception (input), memory (storage and retrieval) and language (organization and expression) due to brain damages (Gianutsos, 1980). In cognitive rehabilitation for aphasia, therapeutic approaches may focus on awareness about own illness, motivation for therapy, and environmental factors about patients' life, as well as speech therapy for symptoms of speech-language impairment. In this article, the author presented a case of cognitive rehabilitation for aphasia, and argued necessity of longitudinal therapeutic approach for patients, because aphasia might be a cause of disturbance for participation in psychosocial environment.

Epilepsy surgery is a treatment option for patients with epilepsy who failed multiple antiepileptic drugs. After detailed investigations for probing the epileptic focus and surrounding functional brain regions, tailor-made resection of the epileptic focus is performed seeking for seizure freedom. Language function is one of the most important higher functions to be preserved in epilepsy and tumor surgery. We have combined the state-of-art systems neuroscience methods to explore and preserve the dual language pathways, such as a less invasive electrical cortical stimulation method, signal analyses and decoding of electrocorticogram (ECoG), cortico-cortical evoked potential, anatomical fiber tractography and longitudinal neuropsychology evaluation. We here report the comprehensive language mapping of the dual language pathway, its clinical application to awake brain surgery, and the novel findings for neural basis of the language dual stream. According to recent function and connectivity studies, the basal temporal language area at and around the anterior fusiform gyrus is one of the crucial regions for semantic memory and is involved in the ventral language pathway. For QOL improvement after epilepsy surgery, a comprehensive multidisciplinary longitudinal study is warranted to delineate the brain plasticity for language functions.

Repetitive transcranial stimulation (rTMS) has been applied clinically for treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders. In the United States, the FDA approved rTMS in 2008 as a treatment to alleviate symptoms of depression. However, therapeutic effects of rTMS for cognitive impairments remain unestablished. In this paper, we will first take an overlook on the major rTMS protocols. Then, representative clinical studies of rTMS on aphasia, hemispatial neglect, and global cognitive function are reviewed. Finally, problems of previous rTMS studies and future directions are discussed.

The age-related decline of cognitive function is not homogeneous; vocabulary knowledge is relatively preserved, but memory and cognitive speed decline rapidly. It is important to clarify the cognitive decline of normal aging to evaluate the patients in the early stage of dementia.

In addition, some patients with neurodegenerative disease pathology or traumatic brain injury are cognitively normal in life. These phenomena are considered as "cognitive reserve (CR) ", which is associated with a lower risk for cognitive decline.

The present review aims to cover the concept of CR, the past epidemiological studies of CR, the neuroimaging studies of neural basis of CR, and the importance of prevention and non-drug treatment of dementia.

Attention is fundamental for various cognitive functions. Therefore activities of daily living and life can be damaged by attention deficits. Classically, the anatomical basis of the attention system is divided into three networks: an alerting network, including the brain stem reticular system, thalamus, and frontal and parietal cortices; an orienting network consisting of regions in the intraparietal sulcus/superior parietal lobe, the temporoparietal junction, frontal eye fields and the ventral frontal cortex; and an executive network, including the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex/medial superior frontal cortex. Recent advances in attention research have suggested that the brain regions associated with attention include cholinergic and noradrenaline pathways, the cingulo-opercular networks and the frontoparietal networks. Unilateral spatial neglect, Bálint syndrome and perseverative agraphia have been described as clinical features of attention deficits. Attention is disrupted by not only focal brain damage but also developmental impairment and degenerative disorders, such as dementia, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder, and attention deficits in these diseases have also been described.

This paper discusses the roles of imaging studies and pathology in clinical neuropsychology with regard to the neuroradiological and neuropathological findings of six autopsied cases. 1) Imaging studies could localize the lesion and suggest the pathological background, but may lead to misdiagnosis. 2) Clinical symptoms may correlate well with the responsible lesions in the early stage of degenerative disorders. 3) Other diagnostic methods should be considered in cases wherein clinical symptoms and imaging studies do not provide sufficient diagnostic information.

The correlation of lesions and symptoms has been necessary in clinical neuropsychology;however, the contributions of diagnostic pathology and imaging studies will be required for future therapy.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the mechanism underlying dressing disability. We report the case of a man in his 80's with a dressing disability caused by cerebral infarction of the right parietal and occipital lobes. We analyzed his dressing ability with his eyes open versus with his eyes closed.

With his eyes open, the patient could find the sleeve and arm, but could not put the arm through it in the first through sleeve dressing process.

With his eyes closed, he could dress without difficulty.

It became clear, following the assessment, that the disability is limited to the open- front shirt and, only to the first through sleeve dressing process. We recognized the same sign when a doll was dressed by him.

We believe that his dressing disability is not a problem of visual identification but is associated with a constructional disorder due to poor visual information in the first through-sleeve dressing process and poor touch-pressure sensory information.