Sergent J
Montréal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Quebec, Canada.
Trends Neurosci. 1994 Jun;17(6):221-7. doi: 10.1016/0166-2236(94)90002-7.
Little is understood about the brain, the mind and their relationships. However, rapid technical advances in brain-imaging devices such as positron emission tomography (PET), functional magnetic resonance imaging, EEG and EMG have increased the capabilities for visualizing the working brain, and uncovering the cerebral areas participating in the realization of cognitive tasks, and progress in cognitive science has led to a better understanding of the functional architecture of mental abilities. There is, therefore, considerable potential for achieving a greater understanding of the relationships between cognition and cerebral structures through brain-imaging studies of mental functions. However, these studies are confronted with a series of difficulties related to the assumptions that govern their application, the constraints imposed by these techniques on the design of cognitive experiments, the complexities inherent in establishing relations between cognition and anatomy through physiology, and to the interpretation of patterns of cerebral activation. In this article, potential difficulties are described drawing essentially on examples from PET studies of cognitive functions. Whereas a bright future lies ahead for the study of human brain mapping, many problems still have to be overcome and solved in order to exploit the full potential of new brain-imaging techniques.
人们对大脑、心智及其关系了解甚少。然而，正电子发射断层扫描（PET）、功能磁共振成像、脑电图和肌电图等脑成像设备的快速技术进步，增强了可视化工作大脑、揭示参与认知任务实现的脑区的能力，认知科学的进展也使人们对心理能力的功能架构有了更好的理解。因此，通过对心理功能的脑成像研究，在更深入理解认知与脑结构之间的关系方面具有相当大的潜力。然而，这些研究面临一系列困难，这些困难与指导其应用的假设、这些技术对认知实验设计的限制、通过生理学在认知与解剖学之间建立关系所固有的复杂性以及脑激活模式的解释有关。在本文中，主要借鉴认知功能PET研究的例子来描述潜在的困难。尽管人类脑图谱研究前景光明，但为了充分发挥新脑成像技术的潜力，仍有许多问题需要克服和解决。
