Keywords

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

While the DSM defines a diagnosis by a set of behaviors that are assigned to a category, neuropsychology, the study of brain–behavior relationships [27], seeks to identify the brain regions, systems, and/or networks that generate behaviors. Its nomenclature is most readily applied to the study of symptoms. The nomenclature of neuropsychology was never intended to meet the needs or demands of DSM diagnosis; at the same time, DSM diagnoses, and the symptoms associated with them, make no reference to neuropsychological test findings. Even the criteria for dementia, which include terms from neuropsychology nomenclature, such as anterograde and/or retrograde amnesia, aphasia, apraxia, agnosia, and disturbances in executive functioning, do not rely on neuropsychological test findings; the symptoms that characterize the disorder may simply be observed.

The persistently heterogeneous presentations of ADHD, the structural and functional brain abnormalities that have been routinely identified in people with ADHD, and the fact that neuropsychological tests have been successfully used as “probes” to identify certain symptoms of ADHD would appear to keep neuropsychology relevant as a means of understanding this disorder [28]. Applying our develo** knowledge of brain–behavior relationships to ADHD will increasingly allow us to understand from whence its symptoms arise. Gaining this knowledge will allow subtypes to be appropriately classified so more relevant treatments can be developed.