Functional imaging studies of human visual cortex.

Abstract

1. The past decade has seen a burgeoning of functional imaging studies of cerebral activity in normal humans. Much of this week has been performed on the visual system, which is an important and often conveniently studied part of the brain. 2. Previously, what we believed about the functional anatomy of the human visual system was almost entirely obtained by studying individual patients with cerebral lesions and from experiments in animals. Early functional imaging experiments were often quite simple, descriptive exercises. 3. Techniques such as positron emission tomography have become quite mature; with this and increasing experience on the part of the investigators, the experiments performed have become more novel. Functional imaging methods have become part of the mainstream of investigations to be used for research on vision. They already have led to novel hypothesis about how aspects of this system work.