Anatomical Explorations of Mind: Studies with Modern Imaging Techniques
M. E. Raichle · Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology · 1990
Theories of how single words are processed by the normal human brain have been developed through studies of patients with various lesions affecting areas of the brain thought o be important in language pro-cessing (LaBerge and Samuels 1974; Damasio 1984; Coltheart 1985). From these studies, two general theories have emerged: a serial model that posits infor-mation flow in an obligatory, stepwise fashion from perception to speech, and a parallel model that posits a flexible modular organization governed by specific in-formation processing requirements hat can vary under particular circumstances. We have studied the process-ing of single words in normal adult humans using posi-tron emission tomography (PET) to determine whether either of these theories best explains the manner in