Neurometrics

Abstract

Neurometric methods may serve to provide criteria for the efficacy of interventions, whether pharmacological or behavioral, in a wide variety of diseases and dysfunctions, including neurological disease, senile deterioration, learning disability, psychosis, mental retardation, drug addiction and malnutrition. The amount of damage and rate of recovery from perinatal trauma, head injury and stroke may be quantitatively evaluated and followed by neurometrics. These techniques may also be used to assess the consequences of organic diseases not directly but potentially relevant to brain function, such as cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and various metabolic diseases and to determine the effects on human beings of drugs, food additives, toxins and environmental pollution. The early detection and remediation of brain disease and cognitive disorders would reduce some of the human social and economic costs of failure to recognize these problems. A real peril exists in that the fate of young and old persons might be as decisively influenced by neurometric measures as has been the case with psychometric measures. While it may eventually be possible to achieve early identification of children at risk for specific learning disabilities before behavioral difficulties have emerged, the attendant dangers of premature or mistaken diagnosis and the adverse effects of labeling a child as dysfunctional must be clearly recognized. Procedures must be devised to ensure that neurometric evaluations are used to optimize the development of individuals, rather than to restrict their opportunities as has too often been the case with psychometric assessment.