Assessment of brain damage through psychological tests (case study)

Abstract

The presentation of a clinical case has always been a focus of attention in psychology, a tradition that seems to be experiencing a resurgence. This is the framework of the present work. It reports the results obtained through psychological testing of a patient with frontotemporal brain damage caused by a projectile to the skull. Both traditional psychodiagnostic tests and a neuropsychological interpretation of the data were employed. The tests used include the Benton Visual Retention Test (BVRT), the Trail Making Test (TMT), and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). Analysis of the test results suggests the presence of diffuse brain damage, more lateralized to the right cerebral hemisphere. This neuropsychological localization coincides with the trajectory of the bullet in the brain and the findings obtained through computerized axial tomography (CAT).