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Language, the most profoundly human of all abilities, has been a focus of study in many disciplines. Cognitive psychological studies of normals have been used to describe language-related information processing. The correlation of language-related behavioral deficits with the site of nervous system injury has been used to relate language processing to brain function. Over the past decade, there has been an explosion in the use of imaging technology, including positron emission tomography (PET), to study the structure and function of the human brain. This article explores how functional imaging with PET has been applied to the study of language, particularly the study of the processing of single words (lexical processing). To understand how PET is used in the study of lexical processing, one has to have some understanding of the technology of PET, a framework in which to explore the processing of words, and knowledge of the ques tions that can be addressed by the specific application of PET studies to issues in lexical processing. This paper follows that path with a brief general introduction to PET, an outline of some aspects of lexical processing, and a presentation of selected PET studies that have addressed issues in lexical processing.
Petersen et al. (Mon,) studied this question.