Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience

Those beautiful color-dappled images are actually representations of particular areas in the brain that are working the hardest—as measured by increased oxygen consumption—when a subject performs a task such as reading a passage or reacting to stimuli, such as pictures of faces.

Looking to the future, some neuroscientists envision a dramatic transformation of criminal law. David Eagleman, for one, welcomes a time when “we may someday find that many types of bad behavior have a basic biological explanation [and] eventually think about bad decision making in the same way we think about any physical process, such as diabetes

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

“Three Problems in the Marriage of Neuroscience and Education,” Cortex 45 (2009): 544–545; and Larry Cuban, “Brain-Based Education—Run from It,” Washington Post, February 28, 2011,

Neuroscientists now think of the brain as an ever-changing ecosystem crackling with electrochemical energy from which our thoughts, emotions, and intentions arise, rather than a collection of blinking neural islands.

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

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”).

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.

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