13 - Lessons From Developing Neuropsychological Approaches to Challenges in Medical and Mental Health in Africa

This workshop provides an overview of the application of neuropsychology to evaluate risk and resilience in children and adults in low and low middle income countries (LIMCs) and resource-limited settings. This will include methodology, scientific results, and discussion of theoretical constructs in the context of the cross-cultural application of lifespan neuropsychology. Discussion will center on research pertaining to infectious disease (e.g., HIV, malaria), chronic disease (e.g., sickle-cell anemia), environmental risk factors (e.g., konzo disease, toxic exposure to heavy metals), and clinical trials (e.g., computerized cognitive training, caregiver training). New approaches to assessment appropriate for field studies also will be discussed (e.g., eye tracking and portable electrophysiological approaches). Li’s (2003) dynamic biocultural co-constructivist paradigm will be used as an organizational framework for understanding the orchestration of developmental plasticity in brain/behavior development, including illustrations of interactions in brain/behavior development at culture-brain, culture-gene, and gene-brain levels. The principal resource for this workshop will be our edited book, Neuropsychology of Children in Africa: Perspectives on Risk and Resilience (Springer Publishing, May 2013). The integration of neuropsychological science with risk and resilience in the global health context can provide a powerful vantage point for outcome in clinical trials, specifically, and for the universal advancement of brain-behavior science in children, in general.