TY - JOUR
T1 - Imaging the mind
AU - Raichle, M. E.
N1 - Funding Information:
While it would be easy to suggest that CT begot PET, such a suggestion would clearly overlook a number of important antecedents unique to PET. PET is based on a group of radionuclides whose properties include short half-lives, a unique decay scheme and chemical properties whose relevance to studies in biology and medicine is immediately obvious. Each of these features had caught the attention of investigators long before the introduction of CT. In fact, in the Berkeley laboratory of Ernest O. Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron, basic biological research using both 11C and 13N had been actively pursued throughout the 1930s. An interesting first hand account of activities in this famous laboratory has been written by one of its members, Martin Kamen. 44 The work of E.O. Lawrence and his group so impressed Arthur Hughes, Chairman of the Physics Department at Washington University in St. Louis as well as the staff of the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at the Medical School,that it was decided to acquire a cyclotron for research in biology and medicine. Funding was provided by the Rockefeller Foundation. Installation was completed in 1941, just in time for the cyclotron to be diverted to a central role in the Manhattan Project. When the war was over a retum of the Washington University cyclotron to research in biology and medicine was possible. However, events seemed to have caught up with the instrument making it no longer important, in the minds of many, for biomedical research.
Funding Information:
I would like to acknowledge many years of generous support from NINDS, NHLBI, The Mc-Donnell Center For Studies of Higher Brain Function at Washington University as well as The John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation and The Charles A. Dana Foundation. I would also like to express my gratitude to the late Michel Ter-Pogossian whose invitation to join his laboratory in 1971 had a profound effect on my scientific career by placing me ringside at some of the most dramatic events in 20th century neuroscience.
PY - 1998
Y1 - 1998
N2 - At the forefront of cognitive neuroscience research in normal humans are the new techniques of functional brain imaging: positron emission tomography (PET) and, more recently, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The signal used by PET is based on the fact that changes in the cellular activity of the brain of normal, awake humans and laboratory animals are accompanied almost invariably by changes in local blood flow. This robust, empirical relationship has fascinated scientists for well over a hundred years. PET provided a level of precision in the measurement of blood flow that opened up the modern era of functional human brain mapping. Further, the discovery with PET that these changes in blood flow are unaccompanied by quantitatively similar changes in oxygen consumption has paved the way for the explosive rise in the use of MRI in functional brain imaging. The remarkable success of this enterprise is a fitting tribute to men like Michel Ter-Pogossian. He pioneered the use of positron emitting radionuclides in biology and medicine when most had abandoned them in favor of more conventional nuclear medicine radionuclides. Importantly, also, he welcomed into his laboratory young scientists with a broad range of talents, many of whom subsequently became leaders in imaging the mind in research centers throughout the world.
AB - At the forefront of cognitive neuroscience research in normal humans are the new techniques of functional brain imaging: positron emission tomography (PET) and, more recently, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The signal used by PET is based on the fact that changes in the cellular activity of the brain of normal, awake humans and laboratory animals are accompanied almost invariably by changes in local blood flow. This robust, empirical relationship has fascinated scientists for well over a hundred years. PET provided a level of precision in the measurement of blood flow that opened up the modern era of functional human brain mapping. Further, the discovery with PET that these changes in blood flow are unaccompanied by quantitatively similar changes in oxygen consumption has paved the way for the explosive rise in the use of MRI in functional brain imaging. The remarkable success of this enterprise is a fitting tribute to men like Michel Ter-Pogossian. He pioneered the use of positron emitting radionuclides in biology and medicine when most had abandoned them in favor of more conventional nuclear medicine radionuclides. Importantly, also, he welcomed into his laboratory young scientists with a broad range of talents, many of whom subsequently became leaders in imaging the mind in research centers throughout the world.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0031755595&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/S0001-2998(98)80033-0
DO - 10.1016/S0001-2998(98)80033-0
M3 - Article
C2 - 9800235
AN - SCOPUS:0031755595
SN - 0001-2998
VL - 28
SP - 278
EP - 289
JO - Seminars in Nuclear Medicine
JF - Seminars in Nuclear Medicine
IS - 4
ER -