Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience

Instead, it means simply that one cannot use the physical rules from the cellular level to completely predict activity at the psychological level.

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

By obtaining measures of brain oxygen levels, they show which regions of the brain are more active when a person is thinking, feeling, or, say, reading or calculating.

The key problem with neurocentrism is that it devalues the importance of psychological explanations and environmental factors, such as familial chaos, stress, and widespread access to drugs, in sustaining addiction.

allow investigators to conclude that structure X “causes” function Y. This is not what fMRI alone can demonstrate. Instead, it at best indicates only correlation—that is, which parts of the brain are active when a person participates in a particular task—not which brain area is causing a particular

Brain scan images are not what they seem either—or at least not how the media often depict them.

Studies that suggest a “brain spot for X” are typically misleading because mental functions are rarely localized to one place in the brain.

When it comes to brain scans, seeing may be believing, but it isn’t necessarily understanding.

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.

seem. They are not photographs of the brain in action in real time.