Functional Neuroimaging in Neurobehavioral Research

Abstract

Functional neuroimaging techniques are to the second century of neurobehavioral research what the clinicopathological method was to the first century—the ultimate empirical method by which theoretical speculations are to be tested. Thus, from Charcot’s day until our own, the “gold standard” criterion for local brain damage—if such damage is offered as an explanation for behavioral deficit—has been the careful postmortem examination of the brain, both grossly and through the microscope. That this method is not yet exhausted is illustrated by the recently rich and fruitful cytoarchitectural studies of dyslexic brains by Galaburda (1983) (see also Geschwind and Galaburda, 1985a-c for a fuller review of the theoretical neurobehavioral context to which such cytoarchitectural studies have been related).