[Application of psychophysics to neurology]

Although psychophysics has already been used in many neurological evaluations including the visual and hearing tests, the use of psychophysics has been limited to the evaluation of sensory disorders. In this review paper, however, the author introduced recent attempts to apply psychophysics to the evaluation of higher cognitive functions such as perception of scenes and facial expressions. Psychophysics was also used to measure visual hypersensitivity in a patient with migraine. The benefits of the use of psychophysics in neurological and neuropsychological settings would be as follows. (1) We can evaluate higher cognitive functions quantitatively. (2) We can measure performance both above and below the normal range by the same method. (3) We can use the same stimulus and task as other research areas such as neuroscience and neuroimaging, and compare results between research areas.