PRECIS OF IMAGES OF MIND

This volume explores how functional brain imaging techniques like posi tron emission tomography have influenced cognitive studies. The first chapter outlines efforts to relate human thought and cognition in term s of great books from the late 1800s through the present. Chapter 2 de scribes mental operations as they are measured in cognitive science st udies. It develops a framework for relating mental operations to activ ity in nerve cells. In Chapter 3, the PET method is reviewed and studi es are presented that use PET to map the striate cortex and to activat e extrastriate motion, color, and form areas. Chapter 4 shows how top down processes involving attention can lead to activation of these sam e areas in the detection of targets, visual search, and visual imagery . This chapter reveals complex networks of activations. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with the presentation of words. Chapter 5 illustrates PET stud ies of the anatomy of visual word processing and shows how the circuit ry used for generating novel uses of words changes as the task becomes automated. Chapter 6 applies high density electrical recording to exp lore these activations in real time and to show how a constant anatomy can be reprogrammed by task instructions to produce and perform diffe rent cognitive tasks. Chapter 7 shows how studies of brain lesions and PET converge on common networks underlying attentional functions such as visual orienting, target detection, and maintenance of the alert s tate. Chapters 8 and 9 apply the network approach to examine normal de velopment of attention in infants and pathological conditions resultin g from brain damage, and psychiatric pathologies of depression, schizo phrenia, and attention deficit disorder. In Chapter 10, new developmen ts such as functional MRI are discussed in terms of future development s and integration of cognitive neuroscience.