The focus of Volume I of the Handbook of Human Brain Function was on basic scientific principles of brain imaging as it relates to the study of human brain function. Once the scientific bases for a particular discipline are established, follow. Such is the status of brain imaging in the study of clinical applications human brain function. It is of interest to note that the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell, who discovered that nuclei precessing in the radiofrequency range could emit a radiofrquency signal detected by a radio receiver. Their findings...

Until recent advents in neuroimaging, the brain had been inaccessible to in vivo visualization, short of neurosurgical procedures or some unfortunate traumatic exposure. It is a tribute to the early contributors to clinical neuroscience that through what, by today's standards, would be deemed extremely crude measure ments, advancements in understanding brain function were made. For example, the theories of higher cortical functions of the brain by Aleksandr Luria or Hans-Lukas Teuber in the 1950s were essentially based on military subjects who sustained traumatic head wounds during World War...