The halstead-reitan neuropsychological battery

The beginnings of the battery can be traced to the special laboratory established by Halstead in 1935 for the study of neurosurgical patients. The first major report on the findings of this laboratory appeared in a book called Brain and intelligence: A Quantitative study of the frontal lobes), suggesting that the original intent of Halstead's test was explaining frontal lobe function. In this book, Halstead proposed his theory of "biological intelligence" and presented what probably the first factor analysis that was done with neuropsychological test data. Perhaps more significantly, though, the book contains descriptions of many of the tests now contained in the Halstead Reitan battery. In historical perspective, Halstead's main contributions to neuropsychological assessment, in addition to his very useful tests, contain the concept of the neuropsychological laboratory in which objective tests are administered in standard fashion and quantitatively scored, and the method of impairment index, a global rating of severity of impairment and probability of the presence of structural brain damage.