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”).

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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