Cognitive neuropsychiatry

Cognitive neuropsychiatry is a sub-discipline of psychology that aims to understand mental illness and psychopathology in terms of models of normal psychological function. It is also a way of uncovering normal psychological processes by studying the effects of their change or impairment. It is derived from the field of cognitive neuropsychology (a type of neuropsychology which aims to understand normal function by studying the effects of brain injury) and maintains many of the same assumptions and methods.

It is a relatively new discipline and only started in earnest in the 1990s but has been influential, not least because of its early successes in explaining some previously mysterious psychiatric disorders, most notably the Capgras delusion and other delusional misidentification syndromes.