M.A. / Once upon a time in a kingdom that existed along the outskirts of our land, there lived some people who were not too popular in our kingdom because they did not cleave to the way of our world. So, these people were locked away, and sentenced to spend time in our dungeons until they were ready to accept the way the kingdom was run. Delusional Dave believed that he was to marry the princess, even though she was only 11 years old. He was of a lowly nature, not even comparing to the standards of a page in the —courts. It was not acceptable that he should even imagine being with a princess maiden, let alone a princess. Sweet Sandy would rant about ideas that were ahead of the times. She believed that she could run the world through programs in her head, she adhered to the concept of infinity, with millions of people working for her. How could such a lowly subject of the kingdom imagine to have such self imposed importance among so many? Rancid Robby was not an agreeable character in the kingdom, because he admonished others through his belief that they were doubles, impostors to do him harm. He believed that the impostors who paraded as the 'doctors' and 'healers' of the kingdom had planted in his head a microchip so small, whereby damage to his brain would occur daily. These three subjects of the kingdom could be heard screaming, ranting and raving into the small hours of the night. Their cries would fall on deaf ears, as the superiority who ran the kingdom and operated the working of the dungeons, would not listen to the cries of madness, would not hear what the people were trying so desperately to say, and could not find it in their hearts to bring relief and comfort to those with the desperate cries. Oh, not to slander the good of the people, the 'decision-makers', who were in charge of deciding the fate of the madmen. They wanted so badly to help, but all they knew was the 'truth' that ran the soul of the kingdom. That truth being the directive of 'conform to the ways of the world or die in the dungeons'. If only Delusional Dave, Sweet Sandy and Rancid Robby were to conform and be like the others in the kingdom, then they would survive. Alas, this was not to be.... This story does not have a happy ending, as these poor subjects of the kingdom were soon lost in the abyss of the one and only reality that the kingdom was prepared to see and hear. That of normality...

D.Litt. et Phil. / The present work set out to evaluate whether the division on a neuropsychological basis between Korsakoff's amnesia and Kevin Walsh's Adaptive Behavioural Syndrome (ABS) was justified (Walsh, 1989). The research took the approach that the supposed agents responsible for the ABS (neurotoxicity of alcohol) and Korsakoff's syndrome (thiamine avitaminosis) had not been proven to produce site-specific lesions. Using Bowden (1990) as a point of departure, Luria's (1973) classic discussion of the hierarchical nature of brain functioning was used to generate the hypothesis that the two topographical areas of the brain are both subject to stimulation via the arousal mechanisms of the reticular activating system of the brainstem, and that this might well result in cortical arousal deficiencies giving rise to the frontal and axial deficits seen in alcohol related syndromes. Evidence was found, using techniques of analysis developed by the Boston group (Kaplan, 1980), that in fact the frontally-based ABS was less vulnerable to brainstem dysfunction, and that when arousal levels began to increase, as in the arousing neuropsychological evaluation environment, signs of frontal dysfunction waned, whilst signs of axial mnemonic difficulties did not. This discrepancy was explained using Luria's information that the frontal cortical areas are richly supplied with connections to the reticular activating system of the brainstem, whereas the axial structures are not so richly endowed. The conclusion was reached that the ASS and l(orsakoff's dysfunctions are two sides of the same coin, and that the division between the two is both an artifact of research designs in the past that have excluded those with signs of alcohol dementia ('pure' amnesias), and the heretofore invisible moderating influence of the acetaldehyde-damaged noradrenergic pathways of the brainstem. The post-traumatic amnesias seen following closed head injury and acute stress were discussed as contributing to the generalisability of the conclusions, and the role of neuropsychologists in the future within the field was discussed.