KYLE.WBST@XEROX.ARPA (08/17/84)
Re: David's request of 13 Aug 84 on Brain Theory-Language & EEG (Warfian Hypothesis from Sde@Mitre-bedford.ARPA) A team at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. developed PET Scan techniques (Positron Emission Tomography) that allowed for real time monitoring of brain response to various external stimuli (sound, light, etc.). The key people are now at UCLA , I think. You can read about this work in Science News, or in Science magazines. There was also a booth at the Toronto APA meeting in 1982 describing various applications for PET technology, and I seem to recall a paper decribing some of the work you mentioned with musicians. One of the magazine articles , I think, mentioned differences between musicians who had become conductors of orchestras vs, those who had not re:left & right brain activity. Musicians also respomd differently to non musical sound inputs such as alarms , ambulance sirens, etc. and it seems to have something to do with their training. As you probably know, the entire issue is clouded by left handed people. They seem to fall into 3 categories: mirror images of right handed ones (i.e. speech is in the lefty's right brain hemisphere, etc), same as right handed people, and non-hemisphere specific (i.e. both halves share same functions with no dominance). The latter group seems to always have inner conflict and trouble making decisions. PET techniques require access to the right expensive gear to make the short lived radio isotopes that are presented to the subject's brain via food stuffs that resemble sugars the brain can use. The emitted radiation is picked up by gear similar to an X-ray CAT scanner and presented to the researcher on a CRT. What one sees is a profile of brain metabolism in response to various stimuli. It is superior to the EEG in the sense that you can see dynamic resource allocation as a function of problem solving. It would provide interesting study for those interested in emulating nature's parallel processor. As I recall, work has also been done using the technique to monitor activity during math problem solving exercises. One last note of reference, APA stands for American Psychiatric (or Psychological...I forget) Association. The 1982 convention I attended was at the Sheraton Plaza complex in Toronto, and a proceedings was generated so a good library should be able to locate a copy. Earle.