title: A thought experiment with positron emission tomography.
abstract: This paper describes a thought experiment. The experiment supposes that the technique of positron emission tomography (PET), as we known it today, was available in 1920 and had been applied then to a study of the visual cortex of man. The 'results' of the experiment show that such an approach would have generated new concepts about the functioning of the visual cortex, and that PET can therefore be considered to be an hypothesis-generating technique.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy, University College, London, UK.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zeki
mesh_terms: D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D009446:Neurobiology / Q000266:history; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology*