Social Neuroscience: People Thinking About Thinking People. John T. Cacioppo, Penny S. Visser, and Cynthia L. Pickett (Eds.). 2006. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 328 pp., $45.00 (HB)

Perhaps not since the flowering of clinical neuropsychology thirty years ago have we seen this sense of exhilaration about the emergence of a new field through the integration of existing disciplines. Clearly, these authors and thinkers feel the same excitement that could be felt when new collaborations were being forged among neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and communication specialists in earlier decades. For the emerging field of social neuroscience, the parent fields include social psychology (see, for example, chapters on Race and Emotion, The Social Neuroscience of Stereotyping and Prejudice, Social and Physical Pain, and Animal Models of Human Attitudes), clinical neuropsychology (Neurological Substrates of Emotional and Social Intelligence: Evidence from Patients with Focal Brain Lesions), social cognition (Neural Substrates of Self Awareness, and three chapters bearing directly on Theory of Mind) and, of course, cognitive and basic neuroscience. Each chapter includes theoretical perspectives from multiple fields and reviews studies that use diverse techniques (including functional imaging, ERP, behavioral scales, lesion studies, developmental studies, and animal studies), although the book is very heavy on functional imaging data. As the editors acknowledge, animal and patient data are not represented in a thorough way.

Geriatric Neuropsychology: Assessment and Intervention. Deborah K. Attix and Kathleen Welsh-Bohmer (Eds.). 2006. New York: The Guilford Press, 467 pp., $65.00 HB.

Most neuropsychologists specializing in assessment and treatment of adults will receive a fair share of referrals for assessment of memory and cognitive functions in older patients. The past 15 to 20 years have been marked by an impressive increase in the amount known about the neurobiological basis of aging and dementia. Keeping up with this field has been like monitoring a “moving target,” as a result of increasing refinements in diagnostic categories, technological developments in neuroimaging, and continuing discoveries in the fields of genetics and molecular biology. The field has needed an accessible reference that reviews all of these important areas while also providing an integration of the literature from a uniquely neuropsychological perspective. I am pleased to report that the book, Geriatric Neuropsychology: Assessment and Intervention, meets this important need.

Cognitive and Behavioral Disorders of Epileptic Origin in Children. Thierry Deonna and Eliane Roulet-Perez. (Eds.). 2005. MacKeith Press, distributed by Cambridge University Press, 256 pp., £50.00; $90.00 HB.

Understanding the effects of epilepsy, a neurological disorder frequently beginning in childhood, is particularly important because it may disrupt the development of foundations for later cognitive and psychological functions. Despite the prevalence of seizure disorders and the importance of the developmental period in which seizures frequently begin, surprisingly little information about the effects of seizures with respect to cognitive and behavioral functioning is available. Moreover, understanding of the complex interactions between the pathological processes (bioelectric disturbance, neuropathology) and developmental, environmental, and psychological variables that contribute to the overall clinical picture is limited. In Cognitive and Behavioral Disorders of Epileptic Origin in Children, Thierry Deonna and Eliane Roulet-Perez take a unique approach to beginning to untangle these variables, drawing on their extensive clinical experience to present a series of cases that illustrate how seizures influence development.

Recent and relevant.