Am J Psychiatry 1991; 148:439-443
Copyright © 1991 by American Psychiatric Association
Biological correlates of mental activity studied with PET
ND Volkow and LR Tancredi
Medical Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973.
The development of newer imaging techniques that allow direct investigation
of the function of the human brain under normal and pathological conditions
has affected the way in which we conceive of the mind/brain relation. In
this report the authors use examples from findings obtained with positron
emission tomography (PET) to illustrate the highly interactive organization
of the brain. Because operations in the brain require the participation of
various brain areas, a model that does not require a one-to-one
relationship between the physical and mental, but rather allows an
association between clusters of physical processes and one or more mental
phenomena, may reflect better the relation between physical brain phenomena
and mental activities.
