Variants of Neuropsychological Syndrome and Stages of Genesis of A.R. Luria’s Concept of the Brain Organization of Mental Functions

Abstract

The article is dedicated to one of the basic concepts of Russian neuropsychology — the concept of the “neuropsychological syndrome”, uniquely associated with the name of Alexander Romanovich Luria. Earlier, A.R. Luria became world famous by virtue of his works devoted to the study of deep, unconscious, and even taboo phenomena of the psyche. This area of Luria’s work, which is close to the psychoanalytic paradigm, was interrupted in the late 1930s in the USSR for ideological reasons. A.R. Luria redirecting the field of research into the connections between the psyche and the brain to such sections of medicine as neurology and neurosurgery. The syndromic approach to the analysis of disorders of mental functions in local lesions of the brain becomes the method of studying this problem. To date, the ideas about the reasons for its variability within the textbook typology remain insufficiently covered and systematized. Recently, the problem of properly understanding and describing syndromes of mental disorders in the Lurian approach became especially relevant due to the expansion of neuropsychological diagnostic applications. This article analyzes the main stages in the development of the concept of the neuropsychological syndrome in the works of A.R. Luria. It also describes the main factors that determine the variability of the syndromes of disorders of brain function.