Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience

The problem is that the illuminated areas on the scan are activated by many other emotions, not just hate.

There is no newly discovered collection of brain regions that are wired together in such a way that they comprise the identifiable neural counterpart of hatred.

Neuroscientists sometimes refer disparagingly to these studies as “blobology,” their tongue-in-cheek label for studies that show which brain areas become activated as subjects experience X or perform task Y.

A first cousin of naive realism, neurorealism denotes the misbegotten propensity to regard brain images as inherently more “real” or valid than other types of behavioral data.

For example, there is a delay of at least two to five seconds between activation of neurons and the increase in oxygen-rich blood flowing to them.

To repeat: It’s all too easy for the nonexpert to lose sight of the fact that fMRI and other brain-imaging techniques do not literally read thoughts or feelings.

Criminal lawyers, not surprisingly, are increasingly drawing on brain images supposedly showing a biological defect that “made” their clients commit murder.

Here’s a spot that lights up when subjects think of God (“Religion center found!”), or researchers find a region for love (“Love found in the brain”).

see neuroscientists as the “new high priests of the secrets of the psyche and explainers of human behavior in general.”

“The only thing different about neuroscience,” according to Morse, “is that we have prettier pictures and it appears more scientific.”