This chapter describes the design, theoretical rationale, and validation of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB). The utility of the battery for functional neuroimaging studies is examined, based on its links with animal neuropsychological research, its decomposition of complex tests of cognition into their constituent parts, and its validation in patient groups with defined brain lesions. The CANTAB has now been used quite extensively in the testing of patients with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. Two CANTAB tests specifically target spatial working memory functions, the spatial span and the self-ordered spatial working memory tasks. Both have been used in the context of positron emission tomography (PET) scanning to resolve a number of theoretical issues concerning the organization of working memory within the frontal lobe. In the CANTAB, short-term visual recognition memory is assessed using the delayed-matching-to-sample (DMTS) task.