This book is the result of studies on cerebral palsy (CP) in children that the authors and their collaborators (medical doctors and therapists) have carried out in recent years. It addresses the main topics associated with the evaluation of adaptive functions in the spastic forms of CP (definition and modifications over the most recent decades, newly classified orientations, etiopathogenesis, anatomic-functional correlations, semiotics, and the so-called associated disorders: visual, cognitive, and behavioral). The main goal of this book is to offer readily accessible information on the nature of the disease, the problems correlated with prognosis, and the rehabilitation. Because of its instructive nature and practical approach, the book will be an invaluable tool for practitioners already working in this field (medical doctors, child neuropsychiatrists and physiatrists, and rehabilitation therapists), for university students studying physical and occupational therapy, and for residents in rehabilitative medicine, child neurology, and orthopedics.

Zusammenfassung
by A. Berthoz The publication of this volume, edited by Adriano Ferrari and Giovanni Cioni, is a major event for several reasons. Most importantly, it concerns an area of child pathology that has yet to be fully explored. In this context, the authors' efforts to compile their observations as well as those of other clinicians and to elaborate their theories have resulted in an ess- tial step in the field of cerebral palsy (CP). The originality of the book is its very clear focus, while at the same time the authors have encouraged the book's contributors to express their ideas and personal opinions. This leads sometimes to redundancy, but this is precisely one of the benefits of the book - cause the same problems are then exposed from different points of views. The reader is thus spared the normative attempts of many other pathology books, in which the compl- ity of a given disease is hidden by the authors' or editors' desire to impose a rigid taxo- my or epidemiology.

Inhalt
Nature of the Defect.- Cerebral Palsy Detection: from John Little to the Present.- Guide to the Interpretation of Cerebral Palsy.- Function Analysis.- Functional Diagnosis in Infants and in Very Young Children: Early Predictive Signs.- Motor Defects.- Perceptive Defects.- Praxic Organization Disorders.- Visual and Oculomotor Disorders.- Neuropsychological Evaluation.- Emotional, Behavioral and Social Disorders in Children and Adolescents with Cerebral Palsy.- Observing Interactions.- Classification of Spastic Syndromes and Clinical Forms.- Critical Aspects of Classifications.- Kinematic Classification.- Tetraplegic Forms.- Dysperceptive Forms.- Forms of Diplegia.- Forms of Hemiplegia.