Introduction

The design, theoretical rationale, and validation of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) are described in this chapter. The utility of the battery for functional neuroimaging studies is examined, based on its links with animal neuropsychological research, its decomposition of complex tests of cognition into their constituent parts, and its validation in patient groups with defined brain lesions. The use of selected tests from the battery is then surveyed, including the Tower of London test of planning, tests of spatial span and selfordered working memory, a rapid visual information processing test of sustained attention, a delayed-matching-to-sample test of visual recognition, and a test of attentional set shifting. Each paradigm is shownto be associated with distinct neural networks of elevated regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) using positron emission tomography (PET) based on H215O. The use of these paradigms to delineate impaired neural networks in depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders is described. The final discussion assesses the prospects of future applications, including the use of other neuroimaging paradigms, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the PET ligand-displacement method.

The CANTAB was originally devised to assess cognitive function in elderly and dementing subjects (Robbins et al., 1994a). However, in the 1990s, it has also been used in the analysis of cognitive function in a range of adult neuropsychiatric syndromes, following drug treatments in healthy adult volunteers, and also in a neurodevelopmental context. The CANTAB comprises a set of computerized tests administered with the aid of a touch-sensitive screen.